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COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE TOCSIN: 

Our Children in Peril 



By 

Elizabeth Strong Worthington 




NE^ rORK :: BROADWAY 
PUBLISHING COMPANY 



I ' COPY w. 






Copyright, 1903, by 
ELIZABETH STRONG WORTHINGTON 



To R. S. W. 

THIS BOOKLET IS AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED 

WITH THE GLAD AND CONFIDENT HOPE 

THAT HE WILL ONE DAY WIELD 

A STRONG INFLUENCE IN THE WORLD 

FOR ENNOBLING AND UPLIFTING 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 
Our Children in Peril 1 

PART II. 
The Growing Immorality of Children 43 

PART III, 
Suggestions as to Remedies 59 



PREFACE. 

It is often an unenviable task to attack. Praise 
smooths the plumage ; criticism ruffles it. We slip 
through this world more easily by agreeing with 
our neighbor, than by combating him, but easy 
living is not exactly a model aim in life. I can 
readily foresee that numerous shafts will be di- 
rected my way for the writing of this booklet. 
I cannot truthfully say I am <vholly indiffer- 
ent to this, although I can realize that my own 
personal fate is a matter of small importance, 
compared to such things as are treated in the 
following pages. I only hope I shall not be 
represented as standing for views which I do not 
hold, or antagonizing anything which, in real- 
ity, is dear to me. I have actual faults enough 
for my enemies to feast upon, so there is no need 
of manufacturing any, out of whole cloth. I take 
pleasure in saying plainly here, that nothing writ- 
ten in these pages about the church, is intended 
to oppose her. Like many others, I regret her 
mistakes, but I keenly realize her immense value 
to the world, and am grateful for the great good 
she has done, and is still doing. No one, who 
is clear headed, can fail to recognize the fact 



viii Preface. 

that to silence the church bells, and level the 
steeples, would be to court calamity of a most 
appalling type. To me the church is a sacred 
institution ; I reverence her as the bride of Christ, 
and look forward, most hopefully, to her continued 
bettering, until she has indeed become worthy 
of her sacred position. 

What I have said about the Catholics will, no 
doubt, be hotly resented. It should not, how- 
ever. A country is not deserving of the name, 
that has no religious policy. Any and every re- 
ligion, soon or late becomes no religion, just as 
an o'er broad creed soon degenerates into no creed 
at all. And a religious policy that is not lived, 
is a weak affair. President Palma has just re- 
minded Cuba that she should bear in mind, in 
her dealings as a country, that she is Roman Cath- 
olic. All well and good. Would that the United 
States would bear in mind that she is Protestant, 
in carrying on her schools. When Protestants 
go to Cuba, they know exactly what they are go- 
ing to, a Catholic country; and no one of them 
who has any sense, will expect the public schools 
there, to be run to suit him. If he wants a non- 
sectarian school, he, and others of his ilk, should 
conduct one. This fair policy is precisely what the 
United States should adopt. None but a bigot, 
however, could endorse the added suggestion that 
those of another faith should be kept out, as far 
as possible. All we need is to stand for what 
we believe, in our public as well as in our private 
life. 

I am happily aware of the steps our public 
school system is taking, in good directions. Near 



Preface. ix 

my present home, we have a school which is for- 
tunate in several of its teachers. Through their 
influence, features of great utility have been in- 
troduced. One of these is a Sloyd class; another, 
a school garden, each of whose well kept little beds 
attest the pride that the pupil who has it in 
charge, feels in its proper cultivation. Other 
schools have introduced sewing classes, cooking 
classes, the latter including instruction in chem- 
istry and domestic economy; others are conduct- 
ing mothers' meetings; and so there are many 
practical features which will* ere long, I trust, 
help to push aside much of the impractical work 
that has been so foolishly carried on. 

Mrs. Margaret Bottome has lately made a sug- 
gestion of great value, it seems to me. She ad- 
tvises the holding of neighborhood mothers' meet- 
ings, all over our country, to discuss the pres- 
ent downhill tendency of our young folk, and 
to devise means of checking it, and changing 
the direction. I earnestly hope this suggestion 
may be acted upon, and that God's blessing may 
go with it. 

Those who have made pedagogy a life study, 
may scorn criticsm from an unlearned outsider, 
but I trust they will bear in mind that our pub- 
lic schools are for the people, and hence see the 
T)ropriety of permitting one of the people a voice 
in the matter. 

I sit in my dear little nest, and brood over 
my birdlings, but even in this retirement, I am 
visited by thoughts which may, perhaps, be of 
service to those who have the opportunity and 
ability to carry them out Although I am no 



X Preface. 

architect, I can note the overloaded, the sinking 
column, and icall in those who are able to relieve 
the pressure, and restore the equilibrium. I can 
detect the smouldering fire in the house-top, and 
sound the alarm. So, perhaps, I may be able to 
note the overloaded, sinking brain, and the 
smouldering fires of sensuality, and sound The 
Tocsin. 

May the call be heard, and may the Great Ar- 
chitect, the Great Chief, send His good, wise, 
capable agents of relief for the saving of our 
children. Elizabeth Strong Worthington. 



PART I. 

THE TOCSIN: 
OUR CHILDREN IN PERIL 



Not long ago two young girls, unconnected with 
one another, went out of this world into the next, 
and by the wrong door; one turned on the gas 
and died of suffocation ; the other, a few days later, 
braved the torture of carbolic acid to escape the 
torture of the school curriculum. Both were in the 
High School ; both were suffering from ill health ; 
both were discouraged and tired of the struggle 
to keep abreast with the work, and both laid down 
voluntarily and went to sleep, to waken, they 
hoped, where they would not be assigned tasks 
beyond their power of accomplishment. 

It was an awful thing for the families — the two 
suicides, but with God's help, the suffering and 
premature end of these young lives may be the 
means of saving others, for these cases attracted 
attention, and must attract more. There was an 
investigation at the time, and in the course of 
this, the Superintendent of Public Schools said 
that he did not hold the schools guilty ; the youn^- 



2 The Tocsin: 

girls were not up to the usual standard of strength, 
and should not have attempted full work. 
Parents, he insisted, were too ambitious for their 
children, wanting them to graduate, even when 
they knew they had weak constitutions. 

There is something of value in all this, but it 
does not strike down to the root of the matter. 
We must probe much deeper before we can discover 
the irritating cause of which these suicides were 
the effect. 

If the case of these two young girls was as 
new as it is startling we might accept the remedy 
suggested by the Superintendent's defense, and 
rest content, but when we look abroad, throughout 
the length and breadth of our land, we are com- 
pelled to admit that such a remedy would but 
poorly cope with so enormous a difficulty as faces 
us. 

If we listen fairly and intelligently we hear 
from all quarters, the same cry — overwork ; if we 
look, with honest eyes, we see the same sight all 
over — tired, broken down youths and maidens. 
This has been brought home to me again and again 
— not through my own children, for I have not 
allowed them to suffer, but through the failures of 
my efforts to secure a normally healthy young 
v/oman to teach the younger ones at home. Fate 
and inclination combined to make a tramp of me 
for some years, so I have had in several different 
cities opportunity to test this matter of cur- 
riculum, and have also in a number of different 
sections of the country, put forth efforts to secure 
assistance at home in the education of my children. 

Again and again I have heard : "I am not very 



Our Children in Peril. 3 

strong; I broke down the last year at High 
School." Or, "I have never been well since I left 
the University." 

My experience, in this regard, has forced me to 
conclude that it is most difficult to find a college 
graduate whose nervous system is not badly im- 
paired; difficult, indeed, to find even a High 
School graduate who has not been more or less in- 
jured nervously. 

Mine is but one of thousands of testimonies. 
Everywhere throughout our land there are intelli- 
gent parents who could tell of sad cases of shat- 
tered nerves among their children, everywhere 
there are physicians who have young patients, 
broken by school work — physicians can tell of re- 
quests, by the thousand^ for some tonic that will 
serve temporarily to mend the nerves and enable 
students to hold out until after graduation — some 
medical lash to stimulate the tired, broken steed 
to keep up, and keep on until the goal is reached. 
What then? Life just fairly begins when the stu- 
dent closes the University door behind him, and we 
who have lived over thirty years, realize that a 
strong body, an unimpaired brain, and sound 
nerves, are factors in the outfit necessary to meet 
life properly. 

Our young folks do not know this; we have to 
know it for them. ''Oh, if I can only get past 
graduation day safely, I don't care for anything 
else." That is their attitude. Throughout their 
entire school career, this same graduation day has 
loomed up before their young, inexperienced eyes 
as the goal of all effort; toward this they turned 
their little feet on the first day of entering school, 



4 The Tocsin: 

and whenever, in the course of succeeding years, 
they stumbled and fell, their first look on rising 
was toward the goal to see if, by slipping, they 
had lost ground, and were set back from the object 
of all their work. The large majority of our young 
people are studying for marks, and marks are of 
value in proportion as they bear on the final great 
day. They are not working for Life; that is the 
unknown. They are working for the known — the 
diploma. Each year, as it is presented to excited, 
fluttering candidates, those in the lower ranks look 
eagerly on, and desire it more ardently than ever, 
and when running toward the goal, they are utter- 
ly unable to observe temperance in their gait. 
What then? We must observe it for them. And 
how ? Ah, me ! In this, as in all else, it were 
easier to tell the twenty what were good to be 
done, than to be one of the twenty to do it. 
Temperance, like consistency, is a jewel, and 
we must look far and long ere we find it, even 
in grown-up ranks. What folly then, to expect 
it in children, and how criminal to leave chil- 
dren either to furnish this jewel for their guid- 
ance, or to break down for the lack of it. To 
be stupid; to be wanting in ambition; to be un- 
principled and to shirk — all this is not being 
temperate, and I am not writing of children 
who discover these characteristics. Physically 
these will come out well enough, so we need not 
worry over them just here. It is for the mettle- 
some, the high-spirited, the aspiring, that we must 
fear. Ay, for those who are made of that mettle 
which carries America to the front wherever she 
goes; for those who are of the same sort as were 



Our Children in Peril. g 

our forefathers when they snapped our bonds and 
wrote America on the banner of the free; of the 
same sort who have carried our flag more than 
half way around the world, and made it one of the 
most respected as well as one of the most beloved 
of all that flutter to the winds of Heaven, Per- 
haps he did not mean it so ; nevertheless this is the 
sort of stufl that the Superintendent of Public 
Schools, who testified in the case of the two young 
suicides, called weakness. This mettlesomeness, 
nervousness, high spiritedness. It breaks more 
easily than solid material, but you know, and I 
know, that for all that^ this same weakness is our 
strength. Like the delicate machinery of a watch, 
it is as easily put out of gear ; an ignorant, clumsy 
touch and it is ruined ; but with care, with wisdom 
in the handling, it keeps time and is steadfast in 
its useful work for years. 

Now, what must we do with this, our finest 
mettle, in the school ? Must we select an especial 
course for these children and deny them the crown- 
ing glory of their school-year — graduation; the 
public recognition of the value of their work; the 
"well done" of the faculty and the trustees? 
What would be the effect of that? Try it on a 
horse ; take a mettlesome thoroughbred, capable of 
winning the race, if placed in proper hands ; give 
him an ignorant jockey whose only method of 
gaining the required speed is the use of the lash. 
Command this jockey not to whip — not to try to 
win, but to draw out and jog along as best he can, 
on account of the weakness of his mount. Now 
watch the steed when the band plays and the racers 
rush past him. See his delicate form quiver and his 



6 The Tocsin: 

eyeballs glow with excitement as he rears and 
plunges in vain effort to take the place that law- 
fully belongs to him. Ay.' belongs to him, for he 
has a right to a place in the race. So have our 
high-spirited children a right to run the race — a 
right to win. Indeed, we cannot spare them from 
the lists, and if the conditions are such that they 
cannot win with safety, the conditions are at fault, 
and the sooner they are changed the better. 

Nerves are important factors in our make-up; 
if diseased, they become our weakness; if healthy, 
our strength. Here in America, we are forced 
to deal with them from the very beginning of a 
child's life, and the more highly bred the child, 
the more troublesome this particular factor. Un- 
happily this is not universally understood — cer- 
tainly it is not acted upon universally. All of 
us "grown-ups" are more or less stupid in this 
regard, even in dealing with one another, and still 
more so in dealing with children. We appreciate 
injuries to the body — apologize if we so much as 
tread upon our neighbor's foot, but we tread upon 
his nerves without stint and without remorse. If 
our boys and girls happen to be well-grown and 
well-looking, we pile mental work upon them, tax- 
ing and straining that delicate network — the nerv- 
ous system — the very essence of life (for which 
the flesh is merely the protective case) ; in short, 
riding roughshod over the intricate mesh without 
a thought of the incalculable injury we are doing. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes refers to this when he 
speaks of the readiness with which we tap one 
another's nerves, when, no doubt we would shrink 
from doing him fleshly harm. It is well to have 



Our Children in Peril. 7 

attention called to this, for a flesh wound nsTially 
heals rapidly, while an overstrained nerve more 
than often cripples one for life. 

We hear at once too much, and too little of all 
this. It is unwise to allow children to talk and 
think of their nerves, but it is still more unwise 
for educators to forget these same nerves in a 
scheme of training. If, however, teachers will be 
unmindful of their duty, parents must jog their 
memories, and as I say this I am not without a 
vivid consciousness of the unpleasantness and dif- 
ficulty of the task proposed. We mothers espe- 
cially, are liable to the imputation of fussiness, 
foolishness, and all sorts of other nesses, when we 
urge caution in the mental work for children. 
Even our married partners frequently laugh at 
our fears, and when we go to school, we are still 
more liable to ridicule. 

I once found it very difficult to stand firm in 
the face of the polite incredulity and amusement 
shown me by the principal of a certain school 
when I insisted that one of my children (a large, 
stout appearing boy) must not study out of school. 

"He does not look delicate," said the man, with 
a slight smile. 

I winced before the subtle sarcasm, but took a 
firmer grip on my position. In view of the ap- 
pearance my boy presented, and in view of the 
fact that he was ashamed to show at school the 
irritability which was to me the warning signal, I 
realized that it was futile to attempt to make his 
teacher understand the risk he would run, if his 
mental work were carried into his hours at home. 
But I clung with undying tenacity to my "must 



8 The Tocsin: 

not," and protected my boy, and went out of the 
building labeled "Silly woman." 

That last did not matter much, however. In 
the long run we shall come out what we really are, 
rather than what somebody thinks us. Happily, 
the verdict, "Foolish" cannot do away with good 
sense, and unhappily, the verdict, "Sensible" can- 
not abolish folly. 

No doubt I am pricked to more earnest effort 
toward a reformation in our school system by a 
vivid page of my own history. Like many another 
child I was, soon after entering school, loaded 
down with more books than my poor little brain 
could have held, had time permitted me to study 
them. I used to look drearily at my armful as 
I went home, realizing that even if I worked 
during my every waking moment, I could not 
learn all that had been assigned me for the next 
day. Then came the difficult task of choosing 
which to take, and which to leave. To a conscien- 
tious, ambitious child, this is always a hard mat- 
ter ; in the end he is all but certain to do just what 
I did — turn over the list feverishly as a debt- 
laden man, with a little money in his hands, runs 
over his bills. "No, I mnt leave this out," and 
"No, I musin't omit that," and so on, until in the 
end the poor child, who is attempting impossi- 
bilities, gives up, goes to school nervously worn 
out and discouraged, to make an attempt to slip 
through as many recitations as he can, and escape 
the dreaded zero. 

Is it not clear that days and weeks of this sort 
must result, not alone in a nerve disintegration, 
but in moral disintegration as well? Happily 



Our Children in Peril. 9 

for me, my nerves gave way in time to save me 
from the full effect of the unconscious lack of 
the lack of thoroughness in class work. For two 
honor in taking credits I did not deserve, and 
years I was an invalid. The doctor's verdict was : 
"She will never be able to study again." Fortu- 
nately, the good man was mistaken, but at the 
time, this opinion fell heavily on the ear of my 
parents, who had fancied they saw occasion for 
bright anticipations. 

No one dared tell me what was said for fear 
of possible effects, and week after week I chafed, 
and watched the school door, seeing with beating 
— all but breaking heart, my classmates walk on 
ahead of me. 

At the end of two years I was able to step into 
the school ranks again, healed, but scarred. 

Naturally, with such a leaf in my own history, 
I was on the alert when my children started to 
school to see that this unhappy tale was not "twice 
told," and it was not long before my vigilance 
detected danger signals. My daughter, a child of 
eight, and her brother, a year younger, were kept 
in school until half-past three, and then sent home 
with enough work to occupy three-quarters of an 
hour, and ere long, as might have been expected, 
they began to show signs of too close confinement. 
I refused to permit any more studying at home, 
and they begged me to go and talk with their 
teachers, to save them from punishment for leav- 
ing their work undone. 

I found the teachers courteous, but helpless; 
they had, so they told me, no volition in the mat- 
ter. Consequently, I repaired to the principal, a 



10 The Tocsin: 

big, burly Irishwoman, with a voice and a manner 
that harmonized with her frame. My interview 
was memorable for being the only occasion upon 
which I was treated with rudeness during the 
many times I have gone to school, and felt com- 
pelled to object to some feature of the work, or 
some particular rule. 

Upon entering the office I was bidden, by the 
teacher who escorted me, to take a seat. This I 
did, and she approached the great woman, who sat 
writing at a desk. After a low-voiced colloquy, in 
which, as appeared later on, she explained enough 
of my errand to rouse the ire of her superior, the 
teacher came to me and said, in a deprecatory 
manner, as if she were sorry to be forced to use 
me thus : 

"Miss Blank is very busy, and she says it's a 
rule in the school that pupils, in these grades, shall 
study three-quarters of an hour daily at home." 

Wishing to reach the source of the trouble, I 
asked : "Whose rule is it ?" 

Before the teacher could open her lips. Miss 
Blank — ^who still sat writing at her desk — ^her back 
toward me, snapped out : "It's my rule." 

"Very well," I said to the teacher, "I have some 
matters to talk over with Miss Blank, and will 
await her leisure." 

Thereupon the teacher went out of the office, 
leaving me absolutely unprotected. I nerved my- 
self for the encounter, which I divined, from a 
study of the back of my robust antagonist, would 
be of no trifling character. 

After some moments of waiting, she remarked, 
brusquely — still without turning: 



Our Children in Peril. ii 

"I'm busy this morning and can't talk with 
you." 

"I'll call another day," I replied, with hideous 
suavity, "if you will be so kind as to name one 
convenient for you." 

Then she wheeled her chair about and faced me. 

"There's no use in our wasting time !" she said, 
with that utter lack of courtesy for which she was 
justly famous, "the rule won't be changed for you, 
and it won't do a particle of good to talk it over 
with me. I know just what jow are going to say." 

"I beg pardon, but I don't think you do know 
just what I am going to say." 

Thereupon she waxed excited and poured forth 
a volley about the number of people in waiting 
that moment to see her, and the children needing 
her, and tlie duties, in general, claiming her. Next 
she launched into a treatise on the uselessness of 
my errand and (to infer from her manner) the 
impertinence of it. To all of this tirade I listened 
without a word. Had I stormed in return it would 
have amounted to nothing. I am harmless when 
I storm, for I presently realize I have put myself 
in a weak position; invariably regret my mood, 
and endeavor to make amends to my opponent. 
But whenever I close my lips and hear the enemy 
out, then there is trouble brewing. I am danger- 
ous when I hold my tongue. 

As soon as my big antagonist paused for breath, 
I said quietly: "Some other time would, perhaps, 
be more convenient for you ; I'll wait." 

She looked into my face and realized I was 
capable of sitting on that chair for several years. 
Now, few principals would care to have the same 



12 The Tocsin: 

woman wintering and siunmering in their office. 
Certainly this principal did not. So, after taking 
in the situation with a look that plainly said a war 
of fists would be more to her taste than a war of 
words, she swung her chair directly in front of 
me, spread her hands on her knees, and, with a 
manner that would have caused a timid woman 
to quail, said: 

"Well, I suppose I may as well hear you now 
as any time. What have you got to say?" 

Thus encouraged, I began. A palmist once told 
me I was not an aggressive woman, and I think 
he was right. I am not fond of contentions, but 
there are some subjects that nerve me to such a de- 
gree that I can enter a battle of any proportions 
with a certain relish, and one of these subjects is 
my children. So it was without any feeling of 
timidity, but with the strongest sense of support 
in the justice of my cause, and (to be entirely 
frank) with a certain relish of the situation as 
well, that I entered upon my task. 

"You say your rule is not to be changed. Am I 
dealing with the Medes and Persians?" 

She looked furious. 

"Am I to understand that you are ready to main- 
tain the public school system is perfect?" 

"I've said nothing of the kind. I don't sup- 
pose it is." 

"Very well, then ; if it is not perfect, it must be 
faulty ; if faulty, it should be subject to change." 

"Well, this rule won't be changed, for it was 
made for a purpose, and it answers that." 

"What is that, may I ask ?" 

"Why, the children have got to study at home as 



Our Children in Peril. 13 

soon as they are in the higher grades, and this is 
to accustom them to it," 

"I have heard of this method before," I re- 
marked. "Down in Mississippi my parents 
knew a woman who used to have her coach- 
man drive out some five or six miles with her, Sun- 
day morning, to prepare her to endure the strain 
of the half mile drive to church. Now setting 
aside the question of the desirability of the home 
study hour or two, later on, let me ask you if the 
best preparation for a hard pull is not the building 
Tip of the t^trength beforehand, and if you think 
this end is best conserved by denying these little 
ones the sunlight and the play which, as every- 
body knows, are necessary for a child's develop- 
ment." 

"Who wants to deny them sunlight and play?" 
she demanded. 

"I live near school," I went on, "and yet my 
children don't reach home until quarter of four. 
Between this hour and bedtime— half past seven — 
they must study three-quarters of an hour, prac- 
tice (I think that you will allow that music is a 
very important part of their education), and take 
dinner, to say nothing of finding time for our fam- 
ily hour, when I read aloud, and chat with them. 
How much space does this leave for running about 
in the sunshine ?" 

"Half past seven is a very early bedtime. Most 
children sit up later than that." 

"A half past seven start seldom means sleep be- 
fore eight, or even a little later," I responded. 
"Growing children, as you doubtless know, need a 
great deal of sleep." 



14 The Tocsin: 

She looked at me in desperation. 

"Will you tell me what you want?" she burst 
forth at last, 

"Gladly," I said, in a cheerful tone, "I want my 
children to be allowed to study in school, instead 
of at home. There are enough hours spent in this 
building for both study and recitation, but as mat- 
ters are now, these are always given to some work 
or other, and so the children are kept busy during 
the time when they could and should be studying. 

"Very well, if 3'Our children can keep up with 
the grade without working at home, they are wel- 
come to do it." 

"And they may have time for study at school, 
instead of being compelled to take part in all these 
extra exercises ?" 

"Yes, they may ; now does that end it ?" 

"It does; thank you, and, Good morning." 

It was a case of the unjust judge ; my continuous 
sitting had worried her into some justice. 

But even this concession proved insufficient, for 
I found that school life did not agree with my 
babies. The change from a life in which, after three 
or four hours spent with their governess, they were 
given the freedom of birds for the rest of the sun- 
lighted day, was too great and too hard for their 
precious, unfolding spirits and their chubby little 
bodies, so at the end of a month, I returned them 
to the nursery school. 

Two years later, when we had, like poor Joe, 
"moved on" to another place, I started them again, 
this time to a school where one could go with a 
question or even an objection and be certain of a 
courteous hearing. By this time my children were 



Our Children in Peril. 15 

in perfect health again, but ere long, the little 
daughter began to grow pale, and from being full 
of life and energy, became listless. 

"What has come to puss?" the governess and I 
asked one another when we saw her seek the ham- 
mock as soon as she entered the house, day after 
day — she who up to this time had never seemed to 
tire ; she whom we had often dubbed the Gay Little 
Girl. 

When I proposed one of our good old-fashioned 
tramps she said, wearily: 

"I can't go." 

"Why not?" 

"I have so much to study." 

"What ?" 

"Oh, a page of "Evangeline" to commit to mem- 
ory, and a long geography lesson, and my arith- 
metic." 

"Where are they all ?" 

She brought out the books, and handed them to 
me, with the places marked. I closed "Evangeline" 
with a snap. 

"There, now, your poetry is learned, what else ?" 

"Why, mamma !" 

Next the geography went to with a bang, and 
the arithmetic was closed as tightly, and as sud- 
denly as the shell of a clam on the approach of 
danger. 

"And now you are through with your geography 
and arithmetic; so you're ready for a walk; run, 
and get your hat." 

"But, mamma, I haven't learned my lessons." 

"You've learned all you'll learn to-night." 

"But I've no time to study in the morning." 



i6 The Tocsin: 

"I know it." 

Then the poor little thing began to cry. 

"Don't you fret, honey; I'll go to school witH 
yon and you'll be all right." 

So I went with her tbe next morning, wrought 
up to such a pitch that the thought of an en- 
counter with the enemy was a distinct relief. 

But there was no battle, for I found the gentle 
little teacher quite my way of thinking. She ex- 
pressed her opinion sotto voce, however, lest she 
imperil her position. 

"What can we do?" she asked. "We teachers 
are almost as helpless as the pupils. The pace is 
set for us, and we are forced to keep it. There are 
just so many pages to be gone over each term, and 
if many of our pupils fail to pass the examinations, 
we are held responsible, and may lose our positions. 
What can we do ?" 

What indeed ! But then and there I resolved to 
do all I could to call attention to this system, so 
ruinous to teachers and pupils both. 

I am glad to say that the public is already awak- 
ing to this evil. In many places, rules forbidding 
teachers to require home study from children in 
these lower grades, have been made. This is a step 
toward the light, but we must walk some distance 
in the same direction, if we would see the sun- 
rise. 

I managed to secure relief for my little daughter 
at the time of which I have been speaking, by get- 
ting permission for her to do all her studying at 
school. My boy, being of a less excitable tempera* 
ment, was not suffering as much damage, but a 
few months later I took them both out, for various 



Our Children in Peril. 17 

reasons, and returned them to the home school, 
where I expect to keep them for some years, 

I am well aware that these scenes I have described 
are most simple — puerile they might be accounted 
in a literary sense, but as a faithful recital of ac- 
tualities which attest to certain conditions existent 
in our public schools to-day, they are of grave im- 
portance. 

If anyone doubts, all I ask is that he will look 
about him; his own eyes will then substantiate 
the truth of my words. Scarce anyone who has 
children is without some evidence of the bad re- 
sults of this cramming system; the overloaded 
arms of many young folk in the higher grades, as 
they return from school, is in itself proof of what 
I assert. 

I once asked a High School miss of my acquaint- 
ance, whom I met on the street, what she was 
supposed to do with that pile of books she was 
carrying. 

"Learn them, every one, before to-morrow morn- 
ing,'' she replied with a laugh — she was not of the 
kind that takes life seriously. 

"You know very well you can't do that," I said. 

"I know very well that I can slip out of them, 
then," she responded with another laugh. 

And on she went to study her lessons. What 
lessons ? We forget that school children are study- 
ing out the Book of Life; this girl was learn- 
ing superficiality and evasion. Hardly the les- 
sons the State ought to be called upon to pay for ! 

Again I look back to my own school days in 
St. Louis. I have before me now a picture of a 
classmate — a bright girl, the daughter of one of 



i8 The Tocsin: 

our generals — as she sat crying in a vexed, de- 
spondent way because she realized she could not, 
by any possibility, learn all the lessons assigned 
her. It seemed to me oftentimes as if each teacher 
gave what would comfortably fill the time between 
the close of school one day and its opening the 
next, without the slightest care of what any other 
teacher might be giving. This method, when 
adopted by some half-dozen teachers, naturally 
resulted in a volume of work which we could 
scarce have crammed into our poor little brains 
had we charged them to the very muzzle. 

It is the work that we don't do that kills oft- 
times, and the school work I did not master broke 
me down and came near crippling me for life. 

This school system is false, in that it pretends 
to point one way and in reality shoots another. 
This cramming is miserably wrong. We all know 
what it means for a student to cram for exami- 
nation — a brain temporarily stretched, as it were, 
only to spring back again with an impaired qual- 
ity. What is learned for that occasion barely lasts 
the occasion out ; it is not even expected to do 
more. It is just so with cramming for recita- 
tion; the desired marks are gained, perhaps, and 
that is about all. Can fine intellectual results be 
obtained from such a method ? ISTo ! A thousand 
times no ! These require the careful, thoughtful 
conning of a few — a very few — ^lessons. But in- 
tellectual failures are by no means the most se- 
rious results of this system. I am more and 
more convinced, as I have opportunity to ex- 
amine into the matter, that, morally speaking, 
all this works havoc. 



Our Children in Peril. 19 

The overwork against which we have been 
inveighing is not confined to the children; teach- 
ers also suffer from it. Compelled, oftentimes, 
by their tasks to remain long after school hours, 
carrying home a load of work that must be lifted 
before the next morning, they too often return 
to school listless and weary — in no condition to 
impart knowledge, still less to inspire their pu- 
pils with high ideals of character. In fact, char- 
acter building is about the last thing many of 
our teachers think of, and the last thing they 
are capable of, but of that we shall speak under 
another head. 

Another difficulty with the present system as 
it acts upon the teachers is the temptation it 
presents for dishonesty in the marking of pa- 
pers. Either the teacher must pass a certain 
number of pupils or must run the risk of losing 
her situation. The consequence of this can be 
easily foreseen in many cases. 

Not only do we work our teachers very hard, 
but we pay them very little, and this big work 
and little pay results in filling the lists with an 
inferior quality of woman (it is chiefly women who 
teach in our public schools). Anyone of discrimi- 
nation who has attended some large gathering of 
public school teachers will bear me out in the as- 
sertion that the large majority of them possess 
neither taste nor qualification for the position of 
teacher — the grandest position outside of parent- 
hood. 

I have heard considerable on the subject of so- 
ciety's refusing to recognize teachers. One article 
in a magazine urged upon the public the giving 



20 The Tocsin: 

of teachers an honored place in society. I can 
hardly help smiling over this; it so stupidly puts 
the cart before the horse. Let teachers be worthy 
of an honored place in society, and they'll take it 
of necessity, but all the sentiment in the world 
can't put illiterate, low-born, uncultured women in 
a high social place, and the teaching ranks are full 
of just such people, many of them put in by 
means of a course of corrupt wirepulling; many 
put in by men as illiterate, as low-born, as un- 
cultured, as utterly unfit for their positions, as the 
teachers they appoint are for theirs. 

When I was a very young girl I was invited to 
go on an excursion gotten up for the St. Louis pub- 
lic school teachers and chiefly attended by them. 
I overheard one of them say at luncheon time that 
she was as hungry as a hedge-hog, and all that day 
I was making mental observations on their appear- 
ance, manners and conversation. Up to that time 
I had seen only the teachers of the school I at- 
tended. I learned then, and this has since been 
impressed upon me still more strongly by the ele- 
vated positions in different parts of the world to 
which those teachers have been called, that they 
were vastly superior to the majority in that posi- 
tion. 

I came home from the picnic with a childish hor- 
ror of teachers, and I trembled lest some finan- 
cial misfortune should befall my father and I be 
forced to earn my own living. The only calling I 
could think of as open to me was teaching, and I 
not only instinctively realized I was unfit for it, 
but I also shrank from allying myself with the 



Our Children in Peril. 21 

common, -uncultured horde I had seen on the day of 
the excursion. 

I hope no one will be so stupid as to misunder- 
stand me. I have no thought of denying that there 
are cultured men and women among the public 
school teachers. I do say, however, that the ma- 
jority of these teachers cannot, even by a stretch 
of kindliness and courtesy, come under that head. 

I have taken pains to see and know as many 
teachers as possible. A number of them have won 
my respect, but I have been forced to acknowledge 
to myself that but few of even these are fit for the 
place they occupy. They themselves realize this 
vividly sometimes. 

"You can't imagine how I long for Friday and 
dread Monday," said one to me. 

I felt sorry for her, poor girl, but I felt still 
more sorry for her pupils. The difference between 
what their work was with her and what it might 
have been with one gifted for teaching is too great 
for us to grasp easily. 

Another teacher said to me that she thought 
teaching was very "nice work. It is so genteel," 
she added so complacently. 

Her ancestors were servants, probably, and she 
felt she rose in the social scale when she stepped 
from dishwashing and scrubbing into teaching. 
But I sat down and thought over the kind of char- 
acter building that was likely to be done by a 
teacher who embraced that profession because it 
was "genteel." 

We cannot look for a much higher grade of work 
from those who adopt that calling merely in order 



22 The Tocsin: 

to make a livelihood, and the numbers who come 
under this head would surprise one, methinks. 

"What are we to do ?" said a man to me the other 
day. "I doubt if we could run our schools if we 
only accepted such teachers as were gifted for the 
work." 

I am always strongly of the opinion that God has 
provided enough workers for any field. What we 
need to know is how to seek them out. A de- 
mand almost invariably calls forth a supply. We 
must make teaching attractive — set a proper pe- 
cuniary value upon it — encourage, by visible and 
invisible rewards, the real teachers whom we al- 
ready possess ; and there are a number of them in 
our schools, scattered here and there, men and 
women who must teach, because God has implanted 
this divine passion in their natures ; who love chil- 
dren ; who have a genius for inspiring them and 
imparting knowledge. I ran across such a woman 
in a school in a rough part of San Francisco. In 
the short time I was in her room she inspired me. 
I felt I wanted to see her again; wanted to talk 
over my children with her and ask her advice. 
God had made her a teacher. This is the kind we 
need — the kind we must have to make our schools 
a success. 

Another evil on foot in the school of to-day (and 
it is first cousin to the overwork) is the continual 
imrest of its atmosphere. Only lately a friend, 
speaking of her children, said : 

"I really don't know what to do with them, but 
I must make some change; they have no chance 
to study in school — teacher rattles on all day — 



Our Children In Peril. 23 

and no chance to play out of school, for they must 
learn their lessons then." 

Now, when a teacher is compelled to rattle on 
all day, a grievous wrong is done her and the chil- 
dren as well. Unless we wish to become a nation 
of rattlebrains we must put a stop to this "rattling 
on continually" at school. Quietude is necessary 
to thought, and thought is an indispensable factor 
in education. ISTo intellectual brawn and muscle, 
capable of standing the test of time, can be formed 
in the midst of commotion. Nor is this latter 
condition favorable to the best type of manners. 
As a nation we discover a lack in our training, due 
to the continual unrest of the atmosphere in which 
we live. We possess great energy, sprightliness 
and ambition, but we lack that evidence of reserve 
force, that perfect control of our powers, that sub- 
tle something, with a charm all its own, which 
we designate poise. The various manifestations 
of our life are temporarily fascinating, especially 
as seen in our women, but alas for the stuff that 
endures to the end ! Pray don't imagine I am ad- 
vocating any such solidity of education as shall dis- 
bar all lighter literature, intercourse and experi- 
mces — that which lends sparkle to manner and con- 
versation. Such a course would be apt to pro- 
duce men and v/omen so heavy and so clumsy in 
the movements in every-day life that one who had 
the misfortune to attempt to manipulate them so- 
cially or otherwise, would, as she trundled them 
about from place to place, feel as might a house- 
wife if she had just so many pieces of ponderous 
furniture on her hands of a sweeping day. The 
golden mean, here and elsewhere, is the true path. 



24 The Tocsin: 

and the wisdom to discover this path and the 
strength to keep the feet therein, should be our 
goal. 

I shall have more to say on this subject of un- 
rest later on, and, if I am not mistaken, we have 
more suffering of various kinds to undergo be- 
cause of it, later on. 

We are in continual need of being reminded that 
it is not what we eat that makes strength, but what 
we digest and assimilate — not what we read or 
study that makes intellectual strength, but what 
we remember and appropriate, and that it is folly 
to attempt to devour books by the wholesale. 

Here in America "Too much ! too much !" is a 
common cry. We overeat, overwork, overstudy. 
As a nation we are intemperate, and, knowing this, 
nevertheless go on, deliberately it would seem, fos- 
tering in our children those unfortunate tenden- 
cies which are their inheritance as Americans, and 
which have tended toward our own personal undo- 
ing. Our public schools are conspicuous aggress- 
ors in this regard. Not only are they trying to 
teach too much at a time, but in the opinion of 
many thoughtful men and women they are carry- 
ing the course too far. It has for some time been 
a grave question whether the State was doing its 
citizens a kindness in giving them such an educa- 
tion free. We all have noted with alarm a growing 
dissatisfaction with labor; an impatience with its 
necessarily hard conditions and modest returns; a 
restlessness in the lower ranks of society, a grow- 
ing determination to step out of the working 
classes; to forsake the trades for clerkships and 
professions; oftentimes a determination to enjoy 



Our Children in Peril. 25 

the privileges of achieveineiit without the ability 
or the willingness to make the necessary prepara- 
tion. 

Near me, in the little village in which I lived 
for a time, was a gentle Swedish woman of the 
class which makes up the peasantry in her country. 
She was working herself into an early grave in 
order to give her daughters time to go to school. 
She was but one of a horde of mothers who are re- 
solved to make teachers of their daughters, and 
thereby add to the long list of the incompetent, 
unfit teachers with which we are already over bur- 
dened. And all the while there are here, there and 
everywhere over our land, careladen wives and 
mothers longing to give comfortable homes and 
modest wages for such service as these girls could 
render, and no doubt would render were they not 
spoiled for it by our foolish public school system, 
which leads them to hold themselves above do- 
mestic work. 

I am very well aware that such a paragraph as 
the foregoing is enough to cost a politician his 
head, but that does not impair its truth. If we 
could for one moment get outside of our ranted 
"freedom and equal opportunity for all" we might 
look at this subject dispassionately, and see that a 
contented peasantry, where thrift, integrity, do- 
mestic virtues and modest wants are leading char- 
acteristics, adds strength to a nation, while on the 
other hand, a seething, discontented class, scornful 
of manual labor, in haste to be rich, fiercely deter- 
mined to be thought "as good as anybody else," is 
a menace to national safety. If our public school 
system tends to diminish the first-named class and 



26 The Tocsin: 

to swell the ranks of the second, we shall ultimately 
see that it might have been improved, even if it is 
"the best in the world," and we shall ardently wish 
we had seen this earlier in the day. 

When we come to consider the matter we realize 
that the various branches in the higher walks of 
professional and business life play but a small part 
in ministering to our necessities, in comparison 
with the trades and so-called menial occupations. 
For this reason it is, to say the least, impolitic of 
the State to burden itself with taxation in order to 
carry on the present system of education which is 
calculated to unfit the people to serve the people. 

We claim that these magic words, "You may be 
President some day,'' dropped frequently in the 
ear of our American youth, tends to the growth of 
his self-respect and ambition, but we seldom ex- 
amine into the matter deeply enough to see that, 
while some few individuals are improved, numbers 
are injured by this sort of stimulus. If we will 
but thoughtfully consider this subject; if we can 
but step, as it were, out of the bustle of every-day 
life into some quiet nook, where we shall no longer 
hear the screaming of the American eagle, we may 
be induced to listen without passion or scorn to 
some earnest citizen who tells us that the rudi- 
ments of "book learning" — an ability to read and 
write, such ciphering as may be necessary in every- 
day life, some knowledge of geography, coupled 
with skill in some trade or domestic pursuit — all 
this based upon the strong foundation of an hon- 
est, religious character, ready and anxious to obey 
the laws of God and of our country, should be the 
State's curriculum in its free public schools. 



Our Children in Peril. 27 

I hope I shall not be iinderstood. to assert that 
whatsoever is more than this yea and nay of edu- 
cation "eometh of evil." But I do say that any 
unprejudiced observer can see for himself that the 
results of our present system are very unsatisfac- 
tory. 

In the August Overland I have just run across 
this sentence: "For years the wisest have ac- 
knowledged that in our educational system, excel- 
lent as it is, there is something lacking. A train- 
ing even in our best institutions, leaves the ordi- 
nary boy and girl singularly defenseless in the 
actual battle of life." 

I scarce think the writer realized the serious- 
ness of the charge she was bringing. For a 
State to so train its children as to unfit them for 
Life's battle, is rather stupid, to speak mildly. 
The name of the article in which this sentence oc- 
curs is significant — "The Little Mothers' Train- 
ing School" — it being a record of a school estab- 
lished to teach girls the most useful and womanly 
domestic employments. I wonder how many of 
these attempts to supplement our Public Schools, 
exist over the country! Schools established to 
teach the people useful arts, while the State is 
using up its money teaching them Latin and Trig- 
onometry ! In the over-turning of affairs which 
is sure to come, soon or late, our legislators may 
decide that the elementary branches are the main 
thing, and that whatsoever cometh of more than 
this must be paid for in money or in labor. 

There are to-day, schools and colleges where the 
expenses of tuition and residence are small; 
there are schools and colleges where the 



28 The Tocsin: 

student may work his way, and there are Corres- 
pondence Schools, by means of which a working 
boy or girl may, by employing in study an hour 
or two each evening (a morally preservative 
method, it strikes me, this studying of evenings, 
instead of running about), gain an ecellent edu- 
cation, at small expense, in some particular line. 
This latter method is already employed by thou- 
sands of people; the change from manual labor 
throughout the day, to intellectual labor during 
the evening proving beneficial in most cases, and 
the effort entailed, proving a means of added 
strength to the character. 

It is clear, then, to anyone conversant with edu- 
cational opportunities that the ambitious, capable 
boy or girl (the only kind worth educating) need 
not pine away for lack of education; it is also 
clear, it seems to me, that the sensible course sug- 
gested, would not only rid the State of unneces- 
sary burdens, but would ultimately enrich her by 
the possession of useful, contented citizens; that 
it would rid the professional world of vast num- 
bers of shj^sters and charlatans; rid our street 
corners of loafers, who, not able to reach the 
higher things, refuse to do the humbler, and would 
enrich the trades and the ranks of domestic serv- 
ice with the competent, decent and orderly em- 
ployees for lack of which they often languish now. 

The Lowell School of Practical Design in Bos- 
ton, whose tuition is free, furnishes, in its regu- 
lations, some hints which might possibly be of 
benefit in the regulation of our public schools. 
At this institute the number of pupils is limited 
to forty-two, and, to quote from the prospectus. 



Our Children in Peril. 29 

"only those students can be retained who, after a 
fair and patient trial are found to have some 
aptitude for work." At the close of each half- 
year all those found to be gravely deficient are 
notified, and a quiet — ^seemingly voluntary — ^with- 
drawal is the result. If the State is bent upon 
teaching Latin and Greek, and other studies of 
equal value to working people, she might do so 
more sensibly by exercising discrimination, in- 
stead of giving anybody and everybody — white, 
black and yellow — the benefit of this extremely 
practical training! 

Such institutions as the Lowell School would 
increase in number and efficiency were the demand 
for them to increase, and the demand certainly 
would increase were the State to cease doing what 
she can't, and begin doing more thoroughly what 
she can. 

The self-made man is already an American di- 
vinity, and although we have pushed him rather 
too far up into the air, and he is, as someone re- 
marked, tremendously fond of trying himself on in 
public, he makes, on the whole, a much more sub- 
stantial and useful citizen than some of the nerve- 
spent, brain-spent, enervated products of our free 
education, and we would do well to multiply his 
species by a change in our methods. 

Scientists have learned that slow growth is a 
law of superiority in the animal world ; according 
as the infancy or period of development is long or 
short, the maturity is superior or inferior. The 
jungle fowl (low in the scale of intelligence) is a 
notable instance of precocity, since it is equipped 
for life so early that upon breaking its shell it 



30 The Tocsin: 

immediately flies away, whereas, on the other hand, 
man's formative period extends over a space of 
more than twenty years, and he does not begin to 
fly until he reaches the age of fourteen or fifteen ! 
• On every side we are taught that forcing is dis- 
astrous; hothouse plants are notably delicate, and 
animals whose growth is hastened by unnatural 
conditions are rarely ever sound. The hair may 
be forced to abnormal length by a certain treat- 
ment, but, as a hairdresser once told me, Nature 
avenges herself for the disturbance of her methods, 
and premature loss is the result. 

With these, and many other instances, illus- 
trative of the folly of undue pressure, in mind, 
what can we expect when we place that most deli- 
cate structure — the human brain — in a hothouse 
of learning, and subject it to a forcing process? 

It is an acknowledged fact that the large ma- 
jority of our foremost men and women come from 
the country, or from the village. There must be a 
reason for this. Is it not because in the country 
and in the village, children are less subject to dis- 
tractions, imdue pressure, and excitement, than in 
the city ? Concentration is one of the laws of high 
achievement, and this, city life, and especially city 
school life, militates against. Various experi- 
ments are being tried to remedy this evil of scatter- 
ing the life energy — ^breaking it into fragments, as 
it were. I know of a school principal who decreed 
that only one topic should be studied and recited 
each day, trying in this way to keep the children's 
minds on one subject for some seven or eight hours. 
He was no doubt in error, but his intention was 
good, and, for my part, I welcome every sign of 



Our Children in Peril. 31 

an awakening which bids fair to improve our sys- 
tem of education. 

I am well aware that there is, to-day, much in 
the life of our nation calculated to shine out in 
seemingly brilliant proof of the wisdom of our 
present methods of education. I am thankful for 
this. Heaven forbid that we should delay to sound 
the warning until the bomb had actually burst, 
and naught remained of the once fair edifice but 
an unsightly wreck. Let us awake in time, before 
the evil is irreparable. We have much to be proud 
of in our schools to-day, and we plume ourselves 
upon them. Nor is self-praise all we hear; not 
long ago Lord Eosebery, speaking of the wonder- 
ful advance the United States had made within a 
comparatively short time, found the explanation of 
this phenomena in our public school system, fos- 
tering, as it does, in the masses both independence 
in action and ambition in aim. 

Why, then, you may ask, attempt to disturb a 
system from which we reap such brilliant results ? 
Because to one who looks beneath the surface, this 
brilliance is the beauty of the consumptive — the 
sign and seal of early decay. Now, then, I find 
myself the target for a storm of invective. I am 
disloyal to my country, someone cries, prophesying 
her ruin. Not so, for my faith in the sound sense 
and discretion of our people, is strong. For the 
present they are blinded by the glare of prosperity, 
but once they can be induced to face the actual 
condition of affairs, they will institute such changes 
as shall save our youth for future greatness. 

America is, as yet an infant among nations — let 
us bear that in mind. What are one or two hun- 



32 The Tocsin: 

dred years as a test of endurance ? What are sev- 
eral hundred as a final proof? Why, it is only a 
few years, comparatively speaking, since Columbus 
was looking us up with a spy-glass — only a few 
years since this entire country was a wilderness of 
solemn forests, lighted by the glare of the war- 
dance fire, and broken here and there by richly 
carpeted valleys where the deer grazed in herds; 
a country whoso towering mountains hurled back 
from the rocky cliffs the defiant Indian war whoop. 

We are so young that even to-day, in those grey 
old worlds across the sea, there are many people 
who still think of us as- clad in a blanket, with — 
not a harp, but a tomahawk 'Vithin our hands." 
To be sure, this ignorance on their part proves 
them better fitted for those emblems of national 
infancy — the blanket and the tomahawk — than we, 
but it also serves to remind us of our youth. 

^^hat of that?" you cry. "See what we have 
done !" 

I know, I know ; it makes a brave list, and I love 
to run it o'er. It begins away back, for we didn't 
wait for numbers, but commenced when there was 
but a handful of us — a little handful that had but 
just scrambled up from the sea and perched on the 
extreme edge of a big continent, of which we knew 
nothing beyond the dark forest fringe that hemmed 
us in — ^began in 1773 by our being sassy to our 
elders, and saying we didn't want their old tea, 
and wouldn't be coerced into taking it. Our swift 
next came, when in 1776 we threw off parental 
authority; then in 1812 we raised our flag on high 
seas, and proved that every word of the Declara- 
tion of Independence was underlined; in 1846 we 



Our Children in Peril. 33 

took another child into onr household and said, 
"Hands off !" to those from whose bonds she had 
escaped. In 1865 we settled an all but fatal fam- 
ily quarrel, and later despite some huge blunders 
made by our statesmen, managed to reconstruct 
the disturbed portion of our household and cement 
the two pieces that had been temporarily severed. 
In 1898 we took our place more firmly among 
the nations of the world, raised the banner of 
humanity and made even scoffers (who, themselves 
unworthy, cannot recognize nobility in others) 
realize that we were a power to be reckoned with 
in the adjustment of republics, kingdoms, and 
empires. In 1900 we proved that our shield was, 
as yet, untarnished and our flag, like the good 
knight, "without fear and without reproach." 

Not only have we proven our collective dignity 
and power, but we have also won admiration for 
individual worth. At the Court of St. James, as 
well as at Berlin and other seats of government, 
we have been so honorably, so ably and so courte- 
ously represented, that the word American has 
come to stand for a high type of manhood. In all 
the recent diplomatic manipulations, entailed by 
our affairs with Spain and with China, we have 
had cause for honest pride in that no potentate 
that Europe boasts, has proven himself better qual- 
ified to uphold the high standard of a Christian 
gentleman — to show forth that commingling of 
cool sense and tender compassion ; of sound moral- 
ity, without priggishness ; intellectuality, without 
pedantry; that combination of simplicity and 
frankness, with dignity and reserve, than our be- 
loved McKinley, and I trow not one among all the 



34 The Tocsin: 

heads of peoples on the face of the globe, has been 
more respected and admired, alike by friend and 
honest foe, than he. His successor, though quite 
a different type, is another of America's fine 
products — a man whom most of us regarded with 
a thrill of pride when, in response to God's call, he 
stepped forward to fill the high place as head of our 
nation — a man, indeed ! A Christian gentleman ! 
Vigorous, intense, clear-headed, unflinching in his 
courage ; unwavering in his honor. A man with an 
inheritance of culture, and yet as simple, direct, 
and natural as the manliest backwoodsman in his 
native wilds. Verily we have cause to be proud 
of these colossal figures, standing out in the clear 
light of international activities ! 

When we think on all this we feel secure, and 
then Cometh danger. "Let him that thinketh he 
standeth take heed lest he fall." Supposing we 
grant that all is well now, what of the future? 
Ere long we of the present generation (perfect as 
we undoubtedly are ! ) will have passed on. \\nio is 
to take our place ? The youth of to-day. And how 
are they being prepared for their coming responsi- 
bilities? "As the twig is bent, the tree is in- 
clined," and if the twig is bent to breaking, the 
tree will be a crotchety, feeble affair. Are our 
schools of to-day calculated to turn out men and 
women strong in brain and strong in principle? 
I refer now to our schools as a whole, but as the 
mass of the people receive their education in the 
public schools, I refer especially to them. I do 
not even ask anyone to accept my single testimony 
in answer to so momentous a question. In matters 
that concern the people, the people themselves 



Our Children in Peril. 35 

should testify. My voice is but one of a million ; 
you can hear the others if you but listen. Hardly 
a day passes but what important testimony in this 
case comes in. Lately it was this story : A mother 
in Denver found her patience with public school 
methods there, worn threadbare, and took up that 
which is mightier than the sword in defense of a 
wrong from which her family, in common with 
others, was sufEering. In the article she wrote, 
she stated that she and her husband hardly knew 
what it was to have an evening for rest and pleas- 
ure, for they were obliged to help their children 
learn the numerous and lengthy lessons which 
they brought home from school. 

"We are paying a school tax for having our 
children taught,^' she said, "and yet are obliged 
to spend most of the little time we have at home 
together, teaching them." 

Even with all this help at home, there was com- 
plaint at school that the children had not mastered 
the work, albeit they were no dullards. What 
must we conclude? Simply that the tasks set 
were beyond the bounds of reason and propriety. 

In the article this mother wrote, she called the 
attention of the public to the number of children 
who had broken down during their school term, 
and asked if such over-forcing of young brains 
should be allowed to continue. 

The Superintendent of Schools was a man high 
in Masonic ranks, and otherwise influential, and 
fearing to antagonize him, one of the papers re- 
fused to print the article. Two others had the 
courage to print it, however, and one of these 
called especial attention to it by enclosing it in 



36 The Tocsin: 

blue lines, and writing an excellent editorial upon 
it. That it struck a responsive chord was manifest 
by the signs of gratitude shown its author. 
Women who were strangers to her — women who 
themselves lacked the courage to speak their minds 
in public, on this subject, drove vip to her door, 
and, as it were, whispered their thanks. 

Passing from this matter of broken health, let 
us take up some other points. Even if our chil- 
dren were able to stand the mental and nervous 
strain of their work, there are other objections of a 
serious nature to our present school system. Edu- 
cators are seeing more and more clearly that the 
study about things is not suflficient, that there 
must be object lessons also — practice as well as 
theory. 

The failure to bear this in mind in arranging 
the school curriculum is largely accountable for a 
failure in life on the part of the children after 
they graduate. Indeed, in many ways, it seems 
as if their training actually disqualifies them for 
life, ridiculous as that sounds. If the Solons who 
compile our elaborate curriculums could be pre- 
vailed upon not to attempt to cover the entire 
universe of learning; if they could be induced to 
select a few — a very few vigorous, fundamental 
branches, reserving the less common and less need- 
ful studies for those who wish to follow especial 
lines, we should see a vast improvement on the 
intellectual diet assigned our children now. 

If properly planned and arranged, the entire 
school work might not only be performed during 
the school hours, but those hours could be material- 
ly shortened, and more time left for those children 



Our Children in Peril. 37 

who have homes needing them, to assist their 
parents, thereby learning in the best way some 
■valuable lessons, and strengthening the home ties 
as well. 

Again and again, in talking over their children 
with me, parents have complained of some serious 
defect in their character, or in their mental ac- 
quirements. 

"Can't you remedy this at home ?" I would ask. 
"Devise some training toward that especial end?" 

The almost invariable answer is : "Oh, no, there 
is no chance for that; their time, in and out of 
school, is all taken up by their studies." 

Lately I spoke to a sweet girl of eighteen, whose 
tastes are strongly domestic. 

"What a comfort you must be to your mother" 
(who is alone with her children) ; "how she must 
lean upon you," I said. 

She looked regretful. "She used to lean upon 
me," she answered, "but really, I'm so busy now, 
she can't. I am just loaded down with studies, 
and I have to shut myself in my room as soon as 
I get home, and poor mama don't dare talk over 
any worry or care with me, for it does seem as if 
I could hardly carry what I've got with my 
studies." 

Is this the way to train a daughter into the full- 
est womanhood ? No wonder we have so many un- 
sexed girls growing up — not liking children; 
hating housework and domestic employments gen- 
erally ! Is it not amazing that we, a free, intelli- 
gent people, will go on paying out money to main- 
tain a system which is peculiarly adapted to make 
our children selfish and impractical? Fitted to 



38 The Tocsin: 

dwarf them as far as character development goes, 
to say nothing of weakening them physically ? To 
keep them, for several of the most precious train- 
ing years of their lives, at studies for which they 
more often than not, have no shred of talent, and 
of which they have no need, while more useful 
branches, attention to which would materially aid 
the development of character, and help them on 
in life, are utterly neglected ! 

I am well aware as I write, of the existence of 
two classes of parents, both of which would unite 
to oppose any such step as shortening the school 
hours; the one class is made up of foolish people, 
incapable of discerning what is for the best good 
of their children, or parents too ignorant or un- 
principled to perform a parents' duty by them, 
even supposing they saw what it was; the other 
class, of people so overburdened by the cares of 
life, that they have neither time nor strength to 
train crude effort, and no means to risk in careless, 
immature labor. These two classes claim that, 
unless the children are kept at school long hours, 
and then sent home with work to occupy them, 
they are running the streets and getting into mis- 
chief. 

The problem of the parent who does not deserve 
to be blest with children, and of the overworked 
parent, so oppressed by unjust conditions that he 
is unable to rear them properly, and enjoy them, is 
not new, by any means. Under another heading 
in this little work, I have a suggestion to offer for 
the care of the children of such parents. 

Coming to another point in our objection to 
the school system — the weakening of home ties — 



Our Children in Peril. 39 

we find OTirselves face to face with a most serious 
question. In fact, the entire matter is serious, 
but this especially so. Since the home is the very 
core of civilization; since all substantial govern- 
ments must rest upon it, certainly it should be the 
State's effort to strengthen in the child, a love of 
home, and to quicken his interest in its conduct. 
That this most desirable result cannot follow the 
present training, but that, on the contrary, children 
experience from it a material weakening of the 
finest ties on earth, will readily be seen if we but 
look into the subject. The long absence from 
home; the return, laden with work of an engross- 
ing nature, demanding quiet and seclusion, must, 
inevitably, separate children in large measure, 
from the affairs of home, and this separation must 
result in a certain degree of alienation and indif- 
ference. 

In some of the schools my children have at- 
tended, I have found it all but impossible to strike 
a responsive chord in the teacher's heart when I 
have pleaded for the preservation of the home 
hour for games, or for reading aloud, or fireside 
chat. Even where no open objection has been 
made to my setting aside the children's studies 
for anything of this kind, I have felt the teacher's 
unspoken thought that I was making the important 
give way to the trivial. The plea for time for the 
children to perform certain home tasks — to learn 
sewing, cooking, gardening, or some other practical 
work — has always met with a more ready response 
if put in the form of my needing assistance, al- 
though it was not always possible to make room 
for it. That last — making room for some home 



40 The Tocsin: 

training I thought important — has generally de- 
volved upon myself, and when I have done it, I 
have been forced to take my children out of the 
regular course, and make them feel something like 
aliens in their own classes. 

I was deeply impressed by the following sen- 
tence, which I "an across lately in the London 
Spectator, in an article on the relationship of 
parent and child: "The complications of ad- 
vancing civilization do not strengthen the primi- 
tive ties ; the conditions of life, in the present day, 
put a great strain on the parental bond, and in 
many instances snap it altogether." 

If that, indeed, is the case, then we would better 
heave this false civilization into the sea, and return 
to our primeval forest. And if our public school 
system is calculated to hasten this ruin (for 
ruin it will be if the primitive ties are snapped), 
then it is false and bad, and the sooner we are rid 
of it the better. 

Every now and then we are almost startled by 
running across some children like those I heard 
of the other day in the Kentucky mountains, who 
discover the most passionate attachment for their 
cheerless homes — barren of everything we think 
necessary to make life endurable. Even in the 
slums of our cities we often stumble upon children, 
who, though beaten and half starved by their 
parents, nevertheless show a deeper interest in 
their wretched homes, and a stronger love for their 
family than the more favored children of the well- 
to-do. Why is this? For some reason, surely, 
since a cause stands behind every effect. I am 
certain it is because they have either, as in the 



Our Children in Peril. 41 

case of the mountaineers, stayed at home, and 
known nothing of outside interests, or else, as in 
the case of the children in the slums, have 
been forced, by the misery and drunkenness of 
their parents, to bear an active part in the care 
of their brothers and sisters, and in the general 
conduct of the home. 

Now, I trust that no wilful or stupid misin- 
terpreter will accuse me of recommending that 
parents get drunk and pound their children, to 
develop a love of home. I do say, however, so 
clearly I trust that he who runs may read, that 
it is necessary to keep children at home some con- 
siderable portion of their time, and to give them 
active home interests, in order to develop a love 
of home and family, and I also assert that our 
school system tends strongly to oppose the develop- 
ment of this fundamental characteristic. In other 
words, the Stae is stupidly working out her own 
undoing. She will see this ere long, I am certain, 
for she has the brain to perceive and the heart to 
feel. Already there is a brightening in our na- 
tional sky, that promises a clearer day than the 
present. 

During the last tour of President McKinley 
there was considerable to set earnest brains 
a-throbbing. One of the San Francisco dailies 
struck a fine note, I thought, in an editorial in 
which it said that, with due consideration for all 
the apt, able and tactful addresses that Mr. Mc- 
Kinley had made, about the best thing he had 
done for the youth of our land was to teach them 
a touching lesson on the strength and beauty of 
the domestic tie. If I might add something to 



42 The Tocsin: 

this, I should say that, to my mind, after due con- 
sideration of all the evidences of loyal devotion 
shown our President, by youth and maturity, 
along his pathway, the most beautiful tribute to 
him, and to the good dwelling in their own hearts, 
was their quick response to him as a man — to the 
father who had been bereaved; to the husband 
whose anxious, loving eyes were continually turned 
to the sweet-faced woman he called by the sacred 
name of wife. 

As long as the heart of the people throbs in 
response to such strong, sweet sentiment, there is 
hope for our future. 



PART II. 

THE GEOWING IMMORALITY OF CHILDREN". 

However urgent the foregoing topics may be, 
they dwindle almost into insignificance when com- 
pared with that of which we must speak in this 
division. The Book which has long been a beacon 
light for the greatest nations on earth, says : "For 
what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul?" And this is the 
solemn question we must now ask. 

Supposing our young people could stand the 
mental strain imposed by their school work; sup- 
posing they were not made superficial and im- 
practical, by the multiplicity of their studies and 
their attention to theory, to the exclusion of prac- 
tice; supposing the strength of their home ties 
were not impaired by the absorption of time and 
interest elsewhere, what then? There would still 
be much to say. In dealing with the points we 
have just mentioned, we have arraigned the school 
system, but in the matter we are now to take up 
we cannot hold the schools responsible, since this 
particular evil exists in an even more virulent 
form outside the school precincts, than it does 
within them. Still, I have a strong hope that a 



44 The Tocsin: 

better school system will do much to correct this 
hideous evil, and I wish to press the matter upon 
the attention of our educators, and implore their 
aid in its cure. 

Many sociologists look with despondency upon 
the reformation of adults, but all agree that hope 
rests in the children. Inheritance presses down- 
ward, in some cases, with fearful weight, it is true, 
but even that load may be lifted by the use of 
such efficient levers as prayer, watchfulness, and 
sound judgment. 

The opposite of this is equally true. We may 
almost say we can combat the evil wrought by 
adults, but if the children are corrupt, how dare 
we look the future in the face ! What is to be- 
come of our rivers and lakes, if our springs are 
poisoned ? 

Those who have studied the youth of our land 
are already aware that a pestilence, more virulent 
than smallpox or cholera, has attacked them. I 
should think it unnecessary to adduce proof of 
this, were it not for the fact that a large number 
of childless people (and, unhappily, the majority 
of our educators belong to this class) are not 
aware of the extent to which this evil has gone. 
Even many parents, heedless or thoughtlessly con- 
fident of their children's virtue, are ignorant of 
the fact that the plague has broken out in their 
very midst. 

Personally I cannot testify in favor of private 
schools over and above public schools. When I was 
a child I was sent to the most fashionable seminary 
in St. Louis. Later on I left in a pet, because 
one of the teachers lectured me for some childish 



Our Children in Peril. 45 

caper. For a time I had a private teacher; then 
my parents consented, very reluctantly, to let me 
attend the High School, and later I attended a pri- 
vate university. So I had a somewhat varied 
personal experience, and am, perhaps, the better 
able for that reason, to compare notes and judge 
in some matters. There was at the seminary, 
although the pupils belonged to families in the 
higher walks of life, a great deal of vulgarity. 
Much that went on was beyond my comprehen- 
sion, but I instinctively shrank from it. For this 
reason, I was dubbed "The Good" by my school- 
mates — all in good nature — and they oftentimes 
changed the subject, and began talking and laugh- 
ing on innocent themes when I came among them. 
If there was anything impure in the talk or the 
conduct of the pupils at the High School, or the 
University I attended, I can only say I never heard 
or saw it. 

But although this was my personal experience, 
from the experience of my children who have at- 
tended both private and public schools, and also 
from all I have been able to learn, on every side, 
I am inclined to think : 

First: 

That children of families standing high in the 
social scale are, as a general thing, less given to 
vulgarity and other immoralities of like nature 
than such children as make up the majority of 
public school classes. 

Second : 

That when the children of educated parents 
indulge in vulgarity, as a general thing they do 
so more covertly than common children, thereby 



46 The Tocsin: 

rendering it more destructive for themselves, but 
less contagious. 

Third : 

That vulgarity and kindred immoralities are 
more common in our primary and grammar schools, 
than in our high schools, colleges and universities, 
owing to the weeding out of inferior pupils, 
from year to year. 

Fourth : 

That vulgarity and kindred immoralities, when 
practiced in the latter schools, are more covert, 
and take on very serious forms, most destructive 
to the individuals, though the rank and file are 
less exposed, by reason of the secretiveness of those 
indulging. 

Possibly my conclusions are at variance with 
those of other people, who may be better informed 
upon the subject than myself, but they are drawn 
from a large number of instances which have come 
to my knowledge in various cities, and smaller 
places. 

Let no one accuse me of exaggerating this evil, 
until he has thoroughly investigated the matter 
in the place in which he lives. 

By nature I was unsuspicious, and unobserving, 
and I long remained ignorant on many of these 
vital subjects. Consequently much, no doubt, 
passed me without attracting my attention. Not 
until I began to send my children to school, did 
I realize that that hideous monster — Immorality, 
was ready to seize its victims before they were out 
of pinafores. While my little ones were yet in 
my arms, I was cautioned to beware what nurses 
might do with them, and little later, I was warned 



Our Children in Peril. 47 

to keep them from certain children in the neigh- 
borhood (one, the little son of an army officer, and 
all belonging to families of education and means) 
lest they be taught vulgarity. When I moved to 
Chicago, and took a house in a delightful sub- 
urb, I was cautioned to keep my children from a 
little boy and girl — brother and sister in a fam- 
ily, living in a handsome place over the way, as 
these children were indulging in hideous immo- 
ralities. It later transpired that the mother had 
been told of this, and had resented tliB information 
hotly. She and the father were fashionable peo- 
ple of gross private life, so their children were to 
be pitied, and I did pity them, but I told my maids 
to admit the smallpox any day, rather than al- 
low those children inside my gate. 

I watched my little ones with lynx eyes, with- 
out letting them know it, but my two elder chil- 
dren were started to school, and there they encoun- 
ered this filthy trouble. Several times, on his 
way home (I always looked for the children at 
just such a moment), my little son was thrown 
to the ground, and urged to expose himself. He 
was released when he resisted, but a more timid 
child might have yielded. Here, as in the major- 
ity of places there were no suitable closet apart- 
ments, the boys going down into a basement, where 
there was a continuous row of seats, without any 
partition between them. Occasionally a teacher 
kept watch here, but more frequently the boys were 
left to themselves, and under such favorable cir- 
cumstances for the propagation of vice, it flour- 
ished horribly. Since the close of my daughter's 
brief term of school life, she has told me that 



48 The Tocsin: 

the lowest things were written on the closet walls, 
and remained there. Evidently it was no teach- 
er's concern to watch over that matter. She has 
also told me that several girls were allowed to go 
at once, to these closets, and as no teacher was at 
hand, often a vulgar girl would do all possible 
to demoralize the rest. In a small public school 
not far from where I live, there are but two clos- 
ets, one for boys and one for girls; they are un- 
der the same roof, only a thin board partition 
separating them. One of the pupils there told me 
that often there was calling and talking, and 
laughing, back and forth. I was so shocked by 
what I heard of it, that although I never have 
had, and never will have a child at this school, 
yet in the interests of the children who had the 
misfortune to be there, I went to one of the trus- 
tees and told him how matters were, and urged 
upon him to see that there were separate closets 
on opposite sides of the yard. Nothing has been 
done, however, but I shall make another attempt 
to effect something. In this same school it was the 
teacher's custom to engage a little girl, for a few 
cents a month, to clean both these closets, instead 
of getting some adult to do that work. I always 
felt that the poor child, who was so misused by 
a miserably ignorant, blundering teacher, was con- 
taminated, and bade my children avoid her. This 
same teacher was in the habit of tying her pupils 
one to the other, and setting them at work in the 
school yard, as a punishment for offences. This 
little group was called the "chain gang," in im- 
itation of that wretched line of convicts after 
whom the teacher was copying. It excited great 



Our Children in Peril. 49 

mirth among the children, especially the boys, 
who thought it jolly good fun. This ingenious 
system of punishment deserves to rank with that 
of a principal of an Oakland school, who decreed 
that, for certain minor offenses among his pupils, 
the culprits (girls as well as boys) should be 
brought out and jeered at, by the other scholars. 
As long as such methods — so successful in brutal- 
izing children are in vogue in our schools, we may 
expect much, and never be disappointed ! 

To return to the particular forms of immo- 
rality with which we are dealing under this head- 
ing, I have been horrified at many things I've 
heard. I have always encouraged my children to 
talk with me with perfect freedom, feeling that 
nothing could be as injurious if it was brought 
to the mother. They have repeated to me bits 
of talk among their school mates, some of these 
overheard and some addressed to them, such as 
might be expected only in brothels; filthy jokes, 
and conundrums and stories, even among young 
girls being frequent. In a few cases that 
have come to my notice, there have been very ap- 
parent evidences of immorality. In several in- 
stances the young girls were asked to quietly leave 
school. One of these eloped and married the boy, 
before the birth of her child. 

In the village in which I lived for a time, the 
happenings were more conspicuous than they 
would have been in a city, and we heard more of 
them, but I have no idea that it was any worse, 
morally speaking. I considered the faculty of the 
school superior in courtesy, and sympathetic un- 
derstanding of the parents' wishes, and of the 



50 The Tocsin: 

needs of the pupils, to that of many of the schools 
with which my children have, been connected. 
But the teachers seemed powerless to stem the tide 
of immorality which at times threatened us with 
a filthy deluge. Many of the pupils were as clean 
and as wholesome young folk as one could wish 
to see, but many, many others were more or less 
stained. 

Outside of school, there were several pitiable 
cases in the village. One, a fatherless child, whose 
mother (going out to work by the day) left her 
unguarded much of the time. She was expelled 
from the school for immoralities, and later on, was 
the victim of a crime involving several grey- 
headed men (grandfathers) who had up to that 
time, been supposed to be respectable. Unfortu- 
nately the community's concern to preserve its rep- 
utation for godliness (it was a religious settle- 
ment), seemed to be greater than its concern for 
its children ; consequently the officials of the place, 
instead of aiding those of the near village, who 
came over to enquire into the matter, tried to hush 
it up, and some one of them was even base enough 
to go bail for the chief offender — a white headed 
roue, who deserved to be hung to the nearest 
tree. This creature was finally sent to the peni- 
tentiary for ten years, but weakness and laxity 
have pardoned him out, and he is around again, 
ready for more filthy villainy. 

The girl of whom I am speaking (at that time 
barely twelve years old) became a village prob- 
lem, and enticed many of the boys of the place 
into immorality. 

Another instance among us was that of the 



Our Children in Peril. 51 

children of a mother, who, after long continued 
unfaithfulness, at last went to her partner in crime. 
The oldest girl (of eleven or twelve) had charge 
of the family. Often she was seen on the streets 
of an evening, and her conduct was as bad as that 
of her companion — the little girl of whom I have 
told. The pathos of the situation was inten- 
sified by the faith of the father, who not only 
trusted and loved his children, but also clung 
to the hope that God would send his wife home 
repentant — he was more than ready to forgive 
her, 

"He is not quite right," someone said to me. 
"he was kicked in the head, by a horse, a while 
ago." 

"It is a pity," I answered, "that some of the 
rest of us couldn't be kicked in the head, and 
in the heart, too, if such love and Christian char- 
ity would result." 

I could not help crying ; it was all so pathetic. 

The disposition and proper care of these miser- 
able waifs was a problem with some of the pitiful, 
conscientious people of the place. A woman with 
a family could not receive such morally diseased 
little ones into her home. It remained, there- 
fore, for a big-souled woman, (to whom God had 
denied children, that she might care for the neg- 
lected) to mother them, and so rescue them from 
the dens toward which their feet were rapidly tend- 
ing. 

I have dwelt at some length upon these eases 
not only because it is so shocking to find such 
in a civilized community, but also because in some 



52 The Tocsin: 

of their features they are duplicated in hundreds 
of places throughout our country. 

I have known of lads of sixteen and seventeen 
years of age, belonging to respectable families, 
visiting Chinatown for low purposes, and bring- 
ing back moral and physical contagion with them. 
I have seen others, of the same age, openly parad- 
ing the streets with abandoned women from a city 
not far distant. 

At a recent lecture I heard Dr. Jordan, of Stan- 
ford, quoted as saying, that a large proportion 
of our youth were morally ruined before entering 
university life, and most of us know how num- 
bers of the students behave during their university 
career. 

It would be horrible enough if this evil were con- 
fined to our boys and young men, but it is not. 
Not long since, a secret individual vice threat- 
ened the destruction of one of our best known fe- 
male colleges. A number of the students became 
too ill to prosecute their studies properly. As 
there was no apparent cause for sickness, a strict 
investigation followed, and this finally elicited con- 
fessions, and resulted in such a number of with- 
drawals, that the institution was, for a time, se- 
riously crippled. 

I spoke to a friend, an elderly woman, on this 
awful subject some time ago. Herself without chil- 
dren, she was disposed to question the correctness 
of my statements. 

"You certainly have grown morbid on this 
theme. I am sure you are exaggerating the trou- 
ble," she said. 

When I spoke of the necessity of talking with 



Our Children in Peril. 53 

one's children in private, winning their confidence 
and warning them to avoid low companions, she 
said: 

"Why, I think it would be awful to speak to 
them of such things. It is awful to even think 
of it in connection w*ith them — mere innocen't 
babies, they are V 

A few days after this very talk, she came to me 
in great excitement. 

"What do you suppose I saw written on the 
fence as I was riding along here, this afternoon?" 

I did not know, nor do I yet, for she said : 

"I can't tell you, I shouldn't want to name 
such words, but they referred to the most sacred 
relationship in life, and were evidently written 
by some childish hand — in big letters on the fence." 

In one of his stories, "Eose, of Dutcher Cooley," 
Hamlin Garland speaks of obscene words scrawled 
in the dust of the road, by passing children, on 
their way to school from the different farm 
houses. I read this book years ago, and was 
amazed and disgusted by this, and still more so 
by his telling of a shocking sin committed by his 
heroine when a little school-girl, with a young 
classmate. I thought Mr. Garland had gone out 
of his way to write of something repellent and 
improbable. I have since then studied this branch 
of sociology in the practical school of Life, and 
alas ! I am only too well aware now, that Hamlin 
Garland did not over-color his picture. 

One of my friends in an Eastern city who lived 
within sight of a vacant stable, noticed a num- 
ber of school children going there, from time 
to time. She resolved to investigate, and upon 



54 The Tocsin: 

doing so, learned enough to terrify anyone to 
whom purity is sacred. 

Not content with the individual sin which even- 
tually engulfs body and soul, and frequently ends 
in the insane asylum, some poor wretched chil- 
dren are taking a short cut to the hell fires of 
sensuality, by practicing an unnamable vice which 
is said to have come from France, and has been 
learned by them, God only knows how. I cannot 
think of this without a shudder; I have never had 
it explained to me, and hope I never shall. All 
I know is that I was warned to beware of some 
children in my neighborhood on this account, and 
that the faces of these children corroborated all 
I heard. 

But of the many, many instances of de- 
pravity that have come to my knowledge, 
the most startling, perhaps, is this; a friend 
of mine, a most careful mother, allowed her 
little girl to associate with another child 
about her own age, — eleven years, as this 
latter was apparently a harmless, child-like and 
innocent little one, as a child of that age should 
be. The parents — Scotch-English — ^belong to the 
working class, are very intelligent, honest, indus- 
trious and religious people. In most respects they 
are careful, even strict with their children, but 
for some inexplicable reason the mother has oc- 
casionally allowed them to associnte with other 
children whose reputation is bad. My friend, 
however, has always had such respect for this 
mother, and felt such confidence in the innocence 
and good behavior of her children, that she had 
no hesitation about letting hers play with them 



Our Children In Peril. 55 

frequently. Imagine her dismay and amazement 
— ^not to mention other feelings, when she read 
the following sentence, written by this seemingly 
sweet, modest child, to her young son — about 
eleven years of age, (who to do him justice was 
wholly innocent in the matter, and who never saw 
the paper, as his sister would not allow her lit- 
tle friend to give it to him, but told her mother 
about it instead). Here is the note: 

"Carrie says to Wilson dear every night, come 
to bed with me and we will have lots of fun to- 
night very sweet i love you darling will you come 
to the bad house with me ?" 

When a child of the class I have described — 
a child of such parentage and training, can de- 
vise a note like the above, it certainly is time we 
looked about us in earnest; guarded our homes, 
our children more carefully, realizing that the 
foulest contagion can slip in through a very small 
chink in our wall of defense. To do this child 
justice, I do not believe she fully realized the 
hideous import of her note. She certainly un- 
derstood it in a measure though, and knew it was 
wrong, for she attempted to conceal it from her 
own and her little friend's mother, and seemed 
much ashamed of having written such a thing 
when her friend declared it was bad, and she 
was not going to give it to her brother. 

I never had anything of this kind come to my 
knowledge which startled me quite as much as this, 
for I had often seen the children of this family, 
and judging from their faces, and from what I 
knew of their parents and home, I supposed that 
they were of the best character. 



56 The Tocsin: 

I have this note — the melancholy proof of the 
direction a child may take unknown to the pa- 
rents, in my hand to-day, and it is a fearful com- 
mentary on all I have ever said on the need of 
a reform among children. 

I can go no farther ; I am heartsick. The sub- 
ject leaves me with a bad taste in my mind. I 
feel as if I had dipped my pen in the sewer. Sure- 
ly I have brought forward enough proof to support 
my assertions, but if not, there is, alas ! much more, 
for I have only told a small part of what I have 
learned on this subject. 

Now there should be three parts to any disserta- 
tion on an evil. First: the proof of its existence. 
Second: the cause. Third: the remedy. 

As to the first, only the wilfully blind can re- 
fuse to be convinced of the existence of this im- 
morality among our children, so we will dismiss 
that part of the subject without further comment. 
As to the cause, even a wise man may go astray. 
We can, however, mention certain things which 
tend in that direction, although they may not be 
the sole causes of that which we so deeply deplore. 

Before entering upon this partial list of causes, 
I wish to say that in treating of the sins of chil- 
dren, I have not mentioned profanity (which I 
have often heard, in the West, from girls as well 
as boys), because people are more generally aware 
of the presence of this evil than of some others, 
and it being a more open, less delicate transgres- 
sion than the particular one with which we have 
been dealing here, it is proportionately less lif- 
ficult to combat. 

With regard to all these vices, many people are 



Our Children in Peril. 57 

under the impression that environment is respon- 
sible. Acting upon this idea, I have known fam- 
ilies move from one place to another at some dis- 
tance from it, simply in order to change the lo- 
cality, for their children's sake. 

There is no doubt something in this. There 
must be, for it is noticeable in business relations, 
as well as in those of children. The State or local- 
ity that dates its early settlement to any cause 
likely to bring together people of a loose way of 
life, must work very many years before it can 
cleanse its wells, more or less poisoned by the con- 
dition of the fountain head of the waters. Most of 
these countries and regions that were originally 
penal settlements, or gold fields, testify, to-day, to 
the truth of this assertion, especially when they are 
brought into sharp contrast with communities 
whose beginnings were founded on an honorable 
ancestry. Climatic conditions are also found to 
have weight in determining the character of the 
individuals, as well as nations. Other things be- 
ing equal, we may look for a more vigorous type 
of morality in the temperate zone, than in the 
torrid. 

Still, I am inclined to think that, aside from 
these broad and less usual differences, we gain but 
little in matters moral, by a change of abode. I 
have never lived in New England, and so can- 
not speak positively of that section. I have an 
idea, however, based upon its history, that in that 
land of original sterling worth we may still find 
more back-bone in the matter of principle than 
in some places I have known. I hope I am not 
mistaken. As far as my experience in residence 



58 The Tocsin: 

does go, I must confess there is not very mueli 
choice, when considering the subject of immoral- 
ity among children, and this leads me to conclude 
that the evil is widespread. 

Assuming that such is the case, let us enquire 
into the causes — for causes there must be, and un- 
til we reach them we cannot hope to effect reforma- 
tion. But in this investigation we shall encroach 
upon the third subject head of this booklet, and 
so we would best transfer it to the next page. 

This has been, to me, a most heart-rending divi- 
sion of my little book. It has been grievous to 
write, and I shrink from turning it over to my 
copyist. But I sit here, in my study, at work upon 
it with a constant prayer that Grod may bring it 
home to the mothers in our land, with such force 
that they will awake to the needs, and the peril of 
their children. 



PART III. 

SUGGESTIONS AS TO EEMEDIES. 

Since we have been writing of schools and 
school children, it seems most appropriate, when 
we come to a discussion of remedies proposed for 
the evils dwelt upon, to take up the school sys- 
tem, before dealing with the more important home 
influences. 

I should like to ask my readers, in the very out- 
set, not to fancy for one moment, that I feel my- 
self capable of solving these awful problems. Es- 
pecially when the questions raised lie more in the 
realms of pedagogy (in which I am quite untu- 
tored), I feel my weakness. We all know, how- 
ever, that there are times when an outsider sees 
vs^ith a clearer vision than a participant; we also 
know that occasionally there arises, from the deep- 
est well of ignorance, a word that Wisdom stoops 
to hear. Most of my suggestions (for that is all I 
have to offer in discussing schools) are rather neg- 
ative than positive, and grow out of a description 
of some unfortunate condition of the present 
school methods. 

I care very little, on the whole, what is said of 
the manner in which I have put this subject for- 



6o The Tocsin: 

ward. So its perusal starts up thought, discus- 
sion, opposition (whichever it may be), I am cer- 
tain good will come from the awakening, soon or 
late. 

In discussing school errors, let us always bear 
in mind that school boards and trustees are not 
deliberately antagonistic to the needs of the peo- 
ple. Their lamentable failure to adopt their 
methods to those needs, and to conserve the high- 
est interest of the vast army of children for whom 
they operate, is generally the result of ignorance 
rather than of carelessness, and as si matter of 
course, never the result of intention. 

Unhappily politics, in all its baneful workings, 
has not spared our educational system. The pres- 
ence of many incompetent principals, and many 
more incompetent teachers is largely due to this 
fact. The sooner the American public sees that 
an entire and wide separation of politics and the 
public schools, is necessary to the furtherance of its 
children's good, the better it will be. Let these 
two — politics and schools — ^be divorced, and see 
to it that each weds again, in another direction, 
that the danger of reunion be removed. 

Many of the members of our present school 
boards are so densely stupid that they call to mind 
Sydney Smith's famous suggestion that the city 
fathers should put their heads together, when he 
was told the streets needed paving. We need on 
our boards people who are fitted for their work; 
women, as well as men for this important position ; 
not excitable, hysterical women, of the type who 
regard opposition as personal insult, but intelli- 
gent, womanly, self-controlled women, thought- 



Our Children in Peril. 6i 

ful, Christian mothers, whose swift intuitions are 
supplemented by careful study of their chil- 
dren's necessities; women, as well as men, who 
have some intelligent idea of what kind of 
citizens a State needs, and consequently are better 
able to formulate a system of education looking 
toward the supply of those needs. Were our school 
boards made up of such men and women we should 
rapidly advance toward a better, brighter educa- 
tional day. 

As to our congested curriculum, the plan men- 
tioned, on a former page, for the public schools — 
that of a few elementary studies, coupled with 
manual training suitable for boys, and also train- 
ing suitable for girls, is the one I most earnestly 
advocate. I would also advocate the conduct of 
State academies and universities, but would require 
the applicants for the higher schools to prove their 
fitness, in character, as well as in mental ability, 
to occupy some higher position in life, than the 
lower grades of schools were qualified to furnish 
preparation for. If the State did conduct any 
such high grade schools as the academy or univer- 
sity, she should see to it that her trustees, as well 
as her faculties, were most carefully selected, and 
were strong enough in numbers to exercise a most 
vigilant surveillance, thereby preventing these ed- 
ucational institutions from being overrun by a 
horde of semi-worthless, immoral young people. 
I am earnestly in favor of State kindergartens; 
not only this, but I would go a step further and 
advocate a State Creche, in connection with every 
public school situated in the poorer parts of the 
city. By means of these institutions — Creche, 



62 The Tocsin: 

Kindergarten, and School, the State would be able 
to train its children (whenever that was made nec- 
essary, in default of a proper home) from their 
very infancy until they were ready to step out 
into the world as wage earners. Think what these 
three schools, in the hands of inspired men and 
women, would mean for the State, in the way of 
citizens, eventually ! 

Expensive ? Ay, but far less so than letting the 
little ones run the streets and alleys, until they 
have, by the time they are four years old, learned 
more vice, than all the schools in Christendom 
can unlearn. Of course, no mother worthy the 
name, would, unless the hard conditions of her life 
compelled her to be absent from home all day, 
give over her sacred charge to the State, but we 
must always bear in mind that there is a vast army 
of children whose parents can not, or will not care 
for them properly, and in this fertile soil the State 
can, by the help of God and his minister — the in- 
spired teacher, do sowing that shall, later on, re- 
sult in noble citizenship. Eead Kate Douglass 
Wiggin's "Patsy," and see what can be done, even 
with a street life, in a Kindergarten. Much more 
could be accomplished if we began with the baby, 
taking it for the better part of the day out of un- 
motherly arms, or out of a neglected cradle. 

We undoubtedly need more teachers, as well as 
better teachers. In our crowded class-rooms the 
individual is lost sight of. Our thinkers know 
this; are talking about it — this sinking of the 
individual in the throng. How can there be prop- 
er teaching — sympathetic teaching, and proper 
surveillance; under such circumstances? You 



Our Children in Peril. 63 

can't do much with boy or man unless you, as an 
individual, deal with him as an individual. As 
for the surveillance, there is, of course, a surveil- 
lance that provokes evil; surveillance must be 
cloaked, to be effective; here and everywhere, good 
intention must walk hand in hand with wisdom. 

Besides the scrimping in teachers, there is a 
scrimping in playgrounds. In a large city school 
which my children attended, the pupils were 
packed in the yard like sardines at recess. Land 
was scarce there; morals still scarcer, and wisdom 
scarcest of all. For fear of accident, the most 
vigorous rules were made; for one boy even to 
chase another around the yard was a misdemeanor. 
Hence the children, denied a proper outlet for 
spirits and energy, limited, by nature, as to proper 
subjects for conversation, and closely associated 
with those who continually see and hear the worst 
at home, sank into immorality; obscenity became 
rife among them. 

I learned not long ago of a society which can 
not fail to work much evil. It exists in a school 
in a small Western town. By its laws no member 
is allowed to reveal any of the happenings in and 
about school, under penalty of certain punish- 
ments, more or less severe. Furthermore, pressure 
of a kind felt by children is brought to bear upon 
all who enter the school, to join the society, re- 
fusal being followed by ostracism. Protected as 
evil doers are, by the false idea of brotherhood and 
honor which obtains in this organization, it is all 
but impossible for a teacher to find them out, and 
yet (this fact is eloquent testimony against the 
teachers in that school) up to the last accounts 



64 The Tocsin: 

that reached me, no vigorous, systematic meas- 
ures had been set on foot for the breaking of this 
corrupting bond. 

In marked and happy contrast with this school, 
is that described in "Artliur Bonnicastle," where 
the boys were taught that it is just as dishonorable 
to protect a school criminal as it is to protect a 
state criminal : that every offense against the honor 
and well being of the institution is also an offense 
against every individual in it, and so far from 
its being mean to bring the culprit to justice, it 
is mean to shield him. There it is impressed upon 
them that a dishonest, lying, or impure boy is an 
offense against each member of the school, and 
also against every member of the outside commu- 
nity to which he belongs, and should be so re- 
garded and dealt with. 

Such ideas as the latter, in our schools, would 
go far toward inculcating lofty iuoas of citizenship 
and patriotism, and would be vastly superior, mor- 
ally speaking, to that now in vogue, to say nothing 
of being more practical. 

One who thinks on this subject, must regret 
much of the training children are receiving at 
present. Take the subject of Patriotism for in- 
stance. On Memorial Day they hear words cal- 
culated to stir anew the passions which fired our 
Civil War; on the Fourth of July the orator of 
the day proclaims the Eevolutionary feats of our 
forefathers. All very well — both of these lessons 
in their place, but their place is a subordinate one 
to the place of more useful matter. Boys espe- 
cially, are captivated by this martial teaching; 
to their minds patriotism is a very easy thing, 



Our Children in Peril. 65 

for the average boy would rather enter a fight than 
keep out of it — has plenty of the brute courage 
necessary to accept a challenge, but less of the 
finer moral courage necessary to decline it. Too 
rarely do the guardians of our youth teach the 
deeper lessons of patriotism, and these are what 
our children chiefly need. War is but an occa- 
sional necessity, and while we all know that it is 
in time of peace that we must prepare for war, yet 
we also know, thank God! that the note of the 
trumpet calling to battle, is receding, and we are 
confidently looking for the time when it shall 
die away, to be heard again nevermore. What 
then abideth? Peace; and the lessons of peace 
should be our chief concern in training our young 
people. 

Not long ago a man said to me, speaking of his 
love for his wife, that he would die for her. I re- 
peated this, thinlving to give her pleasure. She 
was silent a moment, and then said, sadly, "It 
is so much easier to die for one than it is to live 
for one !" Since this occurred, I have learned 
that the husband in this case is selfishly thought- 
less of his wife's comfort; that he has a nasty, 
cowardly kind of temper — of the sort that is irri- 
table about trifles, and snaps, and snarls continu- 
ally. Now I know what she meant when she said 
it was harder to live than to die for another. 

We should teach our children that loyalty to 
country is built of pretty much the same material 
as loyalty to home. It is a fine thing to die for 
one's country in time of danger, but it is a much 
finer and a much more difficult thing to live for 
her, in time of peace. A pride in the outward 



66 The Tocsin: 

appearance of the section in which we live is a 
practical first step toward this latter end. It 
Bounds trivial to say that we should teach a child 
that it is unpatriotic to scatter picnic papers, and 
all sorts of debris over our pleasure grounds, and 
scraps of various sorts, along our streets, but surely 
good citizenship presupposes a pride in the civic' 
home. Pursuing the same train of thought into 
higher realms, the child should learn that all 
kinds of dishonor — theft, cowardice, impurity — 
everything that tends to drag the family name 
clown into the dust — is disloyalty to one's kindred, 
and in a broader sense to one's country ; while, on 
the other hand, everything that tends to the honor 
of home or country, everything that sheds light 
on the family name, or on the word American, is 
patriotism of a fine type. Fighting is often a 
mercenary business; we can even hire men to die 
for us, but we can never hire men to live for us. 
All this sort of work — this higher training, 
must be thought out, lived out, by instructors be- 
fore it can take on form and color to our youth. 
For this reason I again assert that it is utterly 
impossible for thoughtless, shallow, uncultured 
men or women to properly train children, how- 
ever much geometry, and Latin, and Greek they 
may know, and also that oiir schools will never 
attain a hardy, healthy growth until they are 
purged of their unfit teachers. If I am not mis- 
taken, a majority of those now in charge, will go 
when this is done. A remnant will, however, be 
left, a choice remnant that will increase in size 
and strength steadily. I have already spoken of 
the gifted teachers in our schools. I meet one 



Our Children in Peril. 67 

every now and then ; a while ago it was in a High 
School one of my boys attended — a woman in 
charge of the history classes — a fine, strong char- 
acter, devoted to teaching, and able to inspire 
her charge. Again it was in a grammar school 
in a large city ; here the faculty were strangers to 
me, and most of them seemed commonplace 
enough, but there was one woman who stood out 
from among the rest, and shone as a bright star 
in a cloudy firmament. She had not spoken a 
dozen words before I recognized that wonderful 
intuition and sympathy, which meant genius for 
her work. 

There are more of these women in the land, 
numbers of them, longing to teach, and equipped, 
by God, for teaching, but not having the necessary 
political influence, or not knowing the requisite 
amount of some study now in vogue, they remain 
outside the school walls, while vithin are a horde 
of listless, incompetent figureheads, sitting at the 
teachers' desks. When the State ceases to teach 
her little citizens Latin^ Greek, and Trigonometry, 
and begins character-building, these real teachers, 
idle to-day, as far as their chosen work is con- 
cerned, may be called upon, and the others may be 
given an indefinite leave of absence. 

This talk about curriculum and so on, can be 
greatly simplified, it strikes me. All we have to 
do is to ask, "What end do we mean to reach?" 
Then next, "How shall we compass this ?" 

For what are we sending these children to 
school? The question brings us up with a sharp 
jerk. Is it in order to have certain mathematical 
problems, or certain facts in geography crammed 



68 The Tocsin: 

into their young brains, as a charge is crammed 
down the mouth of a cannon ? Or are the mathe- 
matics, the geography, and so on, but incidental 
— a means to an end, and that end the develop- 
ment of the child's intelligence; the opening of 
the windows of his soul to the beauty and useful- 
ness possible — nay, obligatory, to a well-lived 
life? Is our end the committing to memory of 
certain facts, or the awakening of the moral na- 
ture to a relationship to fellow-beings, and an ob- 
ligation to a Creator? Do we desire as a chief 
end, to teach the child higher mathematics, or to 
teach him the higher moral code — strength in self- 
control ; the idea of duty and beauty, even in the 
apparently small concerns of life? 

Is education merely an acquirement of some- 
thing for the individual, or is it an enlargement 
of the mental scope and vision ; a strengthening 
of ties first of all to God, then to the family, then 
to that combination of families which we term 
our country, and finally to the large human fam- 
ily — that brotherhood which comprehends all 
countries and all peoples? 

No one, I think, will deny the value of such 
ends as I have just mentioned. But is it the 
State's aim in her schools ? Last year, while off on 
a trip, I listened to a most interesting lecture, de- 
livered by the president of a large city Normal 
School. He is a man who has brought himself into 
prominence and disfavor by opposing some of the 
features of the school system. It is more than 
likely he will, ere long, be brought to the block, but 
his words can not be put to death by our corrupt 
school boards, or by anyone else. The title of his 



Our Children in Peril. 69 

lecture arrested my attention as I walked along 
the street: "The Problem of Citizenship in our 
Public Schools." 

"I must hear that lecture/' I said to myself, 
"that's a big theme !" 

The speaker was evidently a thoughtful man; 
an able man, too, and a man of experience, so his 
assertions carried weight. Speaking of the con- 
tract entered into by the State with the public, 
he said that in the original document (so to speak) 
there was nothing about citizenship, the State was 
under bond to teach certain branches — that was 
all ; she was, by the original contract, under no ob- 
ligation to mould character, or to inspire good 
citizenship. He brought this out clearly and vivid- 
ly, and I am sure that he sent his audience home, 
thinking. 

If it is true that the State holds herself under 
no obligation to build up character in her future 
citizens, she is a stupid blunderer, and the sooner 
she puts this old contract (so to speak) in the 
flames, and sees to it that a ne'w one is drawn up, 
the better. Briefly, the State needs to awaken to 
the fact that she is walking in the wrong direction 
in her schools ; spending time, effort, and immense 
sums of money foolishly, and she would better 
right about face, immediately. 

That there is the greatest need for a change of 
method, sociologists almost universally agree. 
Can you not see for yourselves, that the present 
system of education has been weighed in the bal- 
ance and foimd wanting? Look about you. In 
Part II. of this booklet, there is proof enough of 
the degeneracy of children to sicken one, and I 



yo The Tocsin: 

have told but a little of what I have kno-vrn. I 
have not told you of the ease of a family in my 
neighborhood, where the parents were regarded 
as respectable people, and the children were not 
only leading immoral lives among themselves, but 
were deliberately corrupting others. An acquaint- 
ance of mine walked to and from school with her 
little girl every day, lest she should fall into the 
hands of one of these infant procurers. Another 
friend of mine told me of the revelations her little 
son made to her. He had been besought by a boy 
living near (a child of a supposedly good family) 
to allow him to have his little sister for base 
purposes. 

I assure you the half can not be told in print ; 
it is unfit for publication, but it is being lived 
around us every day, and by our future citizens. 
Think you that our method of education is tried 
and true ! Look abroad again. Listen to the talk 
in the men's dressing rooms in our handsomest 
houses. Several times young men, whose charac- 
ter commands respect, have told me how they 
have felt, on seeing sweet, modest girls chatting 
or dancing with low fellows, from whose vile lips 
they have Just heard all kinds of indecent lan- 
guage upstairs, in the dressing room. A fair ex- 
terior, a dress coat, and entree to fashionable so- 
ciety is not sufficient to make a gentleman. Im- 
agine, for a moment, that you are looking for a 
man to conduct a business requiring strict hon- 
esty and purity of character. Eun over the list 
of men of your acquaintance ; even supposing they 
all possess the necessary capability, how many of 
them do you consider eligible otherwise? Im- 



Our Children in Peril. 71 

purity is so common that it is expected, and in 
most instances where business engagements be- 
tween men are made, so the employees do their 
work, no exception is taken to immoralities in con- 
nection with their private lives. This can be said 
emphatically of the Government, which in its 
army and navy tolerates drunkenness and the 
grossest immoralities (frequently of a public char- 
acter), if the offence does not, too often, interfere 
with the performance of the officer's duties. 

Since the Boer War we have been startled by 
the death of one of England's leading generals, 
who took his life in Paris, rather than face a court 
martial for unnameable offences against virtue. 

For years there has been heard throughout the 
land a passionate cry against the injustice of 
judging men and women by separate standards 
of virtue, and it would seem as if this cry had, in 
a measure, been heard and answered. But differ- 
ently alas ! from what was intended by those who 
have been making it. Instead of our coming to 
condemn men for sins against virtue, as we have 
condemned women, we are coming to condone 
women for such sins, even as we have condoned 
men. Ask any frank, honest woman of fashionable 
society, and she will tell you this is true. One of 
the most notable instances of this, of late, has been 
the pair who, in one of those insane automobile 
rides which are becoming the fashion in a cer- 
tain brainless set, ran to their death. I was pres- 
ent when two women of my acquaintance were dis- 
cussing them; one mentioned them slightingly, 
alluding to their bad reputations, the other re- 
proved her, and said: 



72 The Tocsin: 

"You ought not to speak so, they lived that 
down." 

How? By a life bright with Christian virtues 
and good deeds ? No ! They married indeed, but 
their lives were spent in the pursuit of pleasure. 
Was there anything in that to wipe out infamous 
records? And is it not a sign of great social lax- 
ity to even mention such people with complais- 
ance? "Judge not," we are told. Certainly, let 
us be silent, and leave judgment to God, but this 
is quite another thing, from such a lax acceptance 
of degraded lives, as we have instanced. 

It is recorded of one of the old English kings 
(Edward the First, I think), that during his reign 
a woman could walk the length and breadth of the 
realm without fear of molestation. Centuries 
have past since that day, and in all this time it is 
supposed, in Christian countries, the children of 
each succeeding generation have been in train- 
ing, by their parents, and by their respective gov- 
ernments. Some very fine results ought to have 
been reached by this time. How is it? In our 
enlightened country is it safe for our women and 
our little girls to walk abroad ? Shame on the 
race ! Shame ! that one of the first things we have 
to instill into the minds of our little daughters, is 
a fear of going into any lonesome place ; a fear 
of accepting the civility of a ride with any man 
when out on some errand. Shame that grown 
women as well as young girls must fear to go 
abroad alone after dark ! 

"How can this be helped ?" you may ask. "There 
will always be the low and vicious, and these will 
menace unprotected womanhood!" 



Our Children in Peril. ' 73 

If it were only a few of the low and the vicious 
among us who threatened our women, we might 
round them up and put them where they would 
be unable to do farther harm. But the ter- 
rible feature of this trouble is that, apart from 
these offenders who belong to an inferior race — a 
race in which the animal instincts and sensual na- 
ture is very strong, we are confronted with the fact 
that a large proportion of the perpetrators of vio- 
lent crimes against purity, are members of sup- 
posedly respectable families. Again you exclaim, 
"What can we do ?" And I answer negatively, if 
education is powerless to overcome base tendencies ; 
if education is powerless to strengthen weak moral 
natures, and to engender habits of self-control, 
then it is no such force as we have been taught to 
believe. 

The plain fact is, we have been educating (if we 
may so abuse the word), toward these vices, not 
positively, always, but negatively. In our public 
schools we have broken down the wall of decency 
by providing no opportunity for seclusion at times 
when modesty calls for privacy. We have brought 
the two sexes together in the every-day battle of 
school life, and have not thrown sheltering guards 
around them. We have not, in family, or in 
school, taught the boy that reverence for woman- 
hood, which is one of the defences of virtue, nor 
have we taugh the girl to hold herself sacred. We 
have not taught our youth reverence for age and 
lawful authority, but have indirectly encouraged 
a pert, petty, contemptible sneering at the opinions 
of parents, teachers and other elders. But worst 
of all (and this is really the cause of all other 



74 The Tocsin: 

failure) we have not taught our children reverence 
for God. We have discussed religion flippantly 
before them, as we have discussed immoralities, 
divorces, and the like, in their hearing. We have 
carefully eliminated from our public schools, 
prayer ; reading of the Bible ; direct allusions to 
Deity. "They can get all that at church," you 
say. But do they? Do these school children at- 
tend church in great numbers? Do those who go, 
attend in the proper spirit? I live near a large 
church which I attend occasionally; the behavior 
of m'any of the young people who go there, is a 
serious drawback to my enjoyment of the services. 
A number of boys and girls so conduct themselves 
during the sermon, and even at prayer time, as 
to disturb all around them. Three such young 
people sat in front of me lately; the two girls 
were in the chairs ; the boy (a lad about seventeen) 
sat on a step (the church was crowded) at their 
feet. He leaned back against the knees of one of 
these girls, and rested his arm on the lap of the 
leaned over and said to one of the girls : "Will you 
other, and they whispered and tittered until I 
please ask that boy to sit up properly? If he has 
no respect for womanhood, he should respect the 
house of God." The girls looked ashamed, and 
whispered to the boy, but he flung me a look so 
insolent and sneering that it was a startling rev- 
elation of character. Ko pure, manly boy could 
ever look like that. Such a look could only come 
from one who was on the road to becoming a pro- 
fane C3'nic, disbelieving in the goodness of God or 
woman, because of the rottenness of his own heart. 
You can't build up a country out of this sort of 



Our Children in Peril. 75 

material. You may contend that I should speak 
to parents to correct such faults as I have just in- 
stanced. I am only too ready to lay the parent's 
share of the blame at the parent's door;, but the 
point I wish to emphasize is this : character-build- 
ing ranks first among the duties, not only of the 
parent, but of every other educator as well. Or 
to put this statement in another form, education 
can rest on no other foundation than this of char- 
acter building. For this reason it must become 
the chief concern of our public schools. Who can 
dispute this? If the State founds and supports 
the school, does it not follow, as a logical sequence, 
that the chief aim of that school should be to in- 
culcate, in the children, such traits as will best con- 
serve the highest interests of the State, or in other 
words, of the community of which they will form a 
part, and in which they must become one of two 
things — a help, or a hindrance? Unless this is 
the avowed purpose of the school, it would better 
close its doors, and let us have our money to use 
in strengthening the locks of the penitentiaries. 

Some one said to me lately that education in 
the time of our forefathers was superior to that 
of the present day, and I am not sure but what he 
was right, for when a child was sent to an old 
Dame school, he was taught to fear God, and the 
multiplication table. Now I was taught to fear 
the multiplication table, but had I depended upon 
the school for any promptings toward religion, I 
might to-day be an infidel. 

About a year or two ago. Dr. H. S. Minturn 
preached a sermon in which he spoke warmly on 
the subject of religion in our schools. In common 



76 The Tocsin: 

with most people he approached the subject with 
an apology. Men are afraid of even the suspicion 
of speaking against this system. It has, for so 
long been our vaunt that few care to look at it 
with candid eyes, and scarce one can be found to 
prick this blister of national conceit, for fear of 
the enraged blow which sudden pain might cause 
the patient to inflict. But unless we do nerve our- 
selves to examine into the matter honestly, intel- 
ligently, and prayerfully, our so called national 
strength is in a fair way to become "our national 
weakness. 

Here is Dr. Minturn's warning: "God forbid 
that I should say an ill word against our public 
school system, the safe-guard of our nation, but is 
the educational machinery subsidiary to the only 
worthy end of fashioning charcater ? Have we, so 
morbidly afraid of uniting Church and State, gone 
so far as to disunite God from the State? This 
is a most serious question. The fate of our sons 
and daughters is involved, and the kingdom of 
God, in our country, is involved. It is not an 
organized scepticism that threatens, but a God- 
forgotten secularism." 

This quotation appeared in an editorial of a 
large city daily, which went on to speak of the 
difficulty attendant upon the bringing of religion 
into the schools — returning practically to the old 
theocratic government, when Church and State 
were united, and Church supreme. 

I am reminded just here of a statement I read 
the other day to the effect that there were two 
clearly defined classes of people: the one busies 
itself with setting forth, in the most elaborate and 



Our Children in Peril. 77 

logical way, the reasons why a thing cannot be 
done, while the other class gets right up and does 
it. Often when I require some service of one of 
my children he goes into a lengthy explanation as 
to why the task can not be performed. He is 
sometimes annoyed when I say: "I know it can't 
be done, but go right ahead and do it.'^ "Where 
there's a will there's a way," is a very trite say- 
ing, but it contains the germs of success. There is 
alwaj^s a way to accomplish the thing that ought 
to be done. Is this putting of the Bible in our 
public schools the thing that ought to be done? 
Examine, and see. We have already declared that 
the true policy of the State toward her children 
is to give them the training that shall render them 
of greatest service to her later on. Who will dis- 
pute this ? Supposing we accept it, then ? We can 
readily see that the mere possession of mathematics 
(however high the mathematics may be!) and 
geography, and so on, is not, per se, of any value 
to the State, but that the possession of a strong, re- 
liable character, and the acquirement of the knowl- 
edge requisite to an honest, independent mainte- 
nance, is of great value to the State. Very well; 
what then? It only remains to be decided what 
system of education is best adapted to bring about 
such results. In an article on Social Progress, by 
Professor Ely, which appeared in the Cosmopoli- 
tan a while ago. President Eliot is quoted as say- 
ing: "No educational system can be successfully 
carried on without education in morals, and no 
education in morals is possible without a religious 
life." Again Professor Ely quotes these words 
from General Brinkerhoff, who has given a life- 



yS The Tocsin: 

time to the work of prison reform : "I want to put 
it on record, with all the emphasis I can command, 
that if we are to make any large progress in the 
reformation of prisoners, or in the prevention of 
crime, or in the betterment of mankind, we must 
utilize more fully than we have heretofore, the re- 
ligious element which is inherent in the universal 
heart of man.'' 

All honor to those who are working to lift the 
fallen ! God help them ! My work, however, much 
as I respect theirs, is essentially different. I am 
undertaking the ounce of prevention, rather than 
the pound of cure. 

In the quotation just made, I italicized the 
words "prevention of crime" because I wished to 
call the attention of educators to the fact that 
when the State busies herself with character- 
building, she is taking steps toward the emptying 
of her penitentiaries. Just here 3'ou may laugh at 
me for rehearsing such trite truth. "It is an old 
theme," you cry; "long ago we discovered that edu- 
cation diminished crime." Ay, you discovered it ! 
but are you working logically and successfully on 
that hypothesis ? Eeread, if you please, the above 
quotations ; they are notable, and come from nota- 
ble sources. Then look at our schools by their 
light. What do j^ou see? An educational system 
that conforms to these eminently wise suggestions ? 
ISTo ; rather one that carefully steers clear of this 
wisdom. Instead of utilizing the religious ele- 
ment in our sehools, we totally ignore it. 

We are a set of stupid blunderers in Hiany direc- 
tions, and we blunder in religious matters, as in 
others. Too often we cQnfound religion with the 



Our Children in Peril. 79 

church. Eeligion is a thing of God, whereas the 
church, though founded by Christ, is carried on 
by man, and bears the impress of his clumsy hand 
on its every feature. If the church of to-day were 
to be compared with the simple association 
founded by our Saviour, — the association whose 
members Paul rebuked so earnestly for calling 
themselves by the name of some human leader, I 
fear it would look like an adopted child rather 
than like a child of the same blood. Sectarianism 
is one thing ; religion another. Against the form- 
er we should bar our public school doors, even as 
Stephen Girard barred the doors of his college. 
Sectarianism may be well enough in its place, 
for those who care for such things; in itself it is 
harmless — simply denoting as it does a difference 
of opinion on questions, the settlement of which is 
either beyond human power, or entirely imma- 
terial. When sectarianism is confounded with re- 
ligion, however, then it works injury. We are so 
hedged about by man-made creeds, and the atten- 
tion of great bodies of ministers is so often given 
to trying and condemning some fellow minister 
for not believing in the damnation of unbaptized 
infants, or some similar stuff and nonsense, that 
the legitimate mission of religion is too often com- 
pletely lost sight of. But albeit we may be some- 
what confused by such evidence, on the part of 
those who should be our spiritual guides, that they 
themselves are unbaptized with Christian grace 
and charity, and in far greater need of damnation 
than the poor little babies, yet our undeviating 
Guide has not left us in the dark as to the defini- 
tion of religion "pure and undefiled." It tells the 



8o The Tocsin: 

wayfaring man in language so simple and .clear 
that, though he be a fool, he need not err therein, 
"To visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic- 
tion, and to keep himself unspotted from the 
world." 

On top of this the "Finnally, brethern" — the 
sum total of religion, comes down to us like a 
grand chorus from out Heaven itself; "Finally, 
brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report, if there be 
any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
these things." 

Our failure to teach this sublime doctrine in 
our homes, and in our public schools, is the reason 
for the horrible degeneracy of our youth. What ! 
the Bible is our public schools ! Ay ! the Book 
that many of the world's greatest thinkers, after 
the most elaborate researches into the literature 
of ages, have decided contains the only perfect code 
of morals ever known ! What better code could 
we have in our training schools for the young? 
No one attempts to offer another in its place. 
Many, however, oppose this, and in so doing have 
really proven themselves traitors to their country 
by refusing to minister to her deepest needs, and 
by throwing the weight of their influence on the 
side of that which will, if unchecked, ultimately 
dim her glory, and undermine her strength. 

Only lately in a New Yo^k daily, a controversy 
has been in progress. It began with an article 
by a Hindoo making light of the work accom- 
plished by our missionaries in India; animadvert- 
ing the claims of Christianity; and insisting that 



Our Children in Peril. 8i 

Buddhism was as potent to upbuild and unlift 
human nature. This article elicited a reply from 
another Hindoo, who asserted and brought abund- 
ant proof to bear out his assertions that the first 
writer only displayed his ignorance of what had 
been going on in India in the missionary field. 
He further said that, after giving the subject care- 
ful study, he had been forced to conclude that the 
Buddhist religion contained no such power for 
the development of human character, as did the 
Christian religion. 

Who shall gainsay him ? Look abroad ; read his- 
tory with G-od in your heart, and you will 
then see and understand. Never has there been 
a force equal to this same Christian religion, for 
civilizing, developing, strengthening, uplifting. I 
care not with whom this experiment is made; 
whether with Anglo-Saxon, or with Sandwich Is- 
lander. The result is always a rapid succession 
of strides toward individual, and national develop- 
ment. 

Can you tell me of any superior force to use 
in the training of our youth? Once we had the 
Bible in our public schools. Who turned it out? 
Many voices will answer, "The Eomanists.'' It 
is asserted that, after working for years, they at 
last prevailed on our politicians to bring about this 
destructive result. Their argument was subtle; 
the public schools supported by taxation, so the 
tempter said, must not teach what the people op- 
pose; the United States, founded in the name of 
freedom, must not compel all to support one sect. 

Before this subtlety many, who personally were 
in favor of the use of this marvelous Book of 



82 The Tocsin: 

morals in our schools, went down. They ought 
to have stood their ground ; had they looked about 
them sensibly and calmly they would have be- 
come conscious of resting on a good firm founda- 
tion. Let us see. Was not the United States 
from the very first avowedly a Protestant coun- 
try? Does she not stand for this faith among 
the nations of the earth ? Why then, in the train- 
ing of her youth, should she be more hampered by 
the clamor of her Eomanist citizens against the 
reading and teaching Bible truths in her schools, 
than she should be by any clamor her Mormon 
citizens might raise against the teaching of the 
pure doctrines of Christ which are opposed to 
polygamy ? As a matter of fact, although the Mor- 
mons are citizens, amenable to taxation, they are 
compelled by law to abandon one of the prominent 
tenets of their faith — polygamy. Nobody, un- 
less it is those who are longing for this sensual 
way of life, has seen fit to become excited over 
this — to call it injustice, or anything of the sort. 
Again, we have Sunday laws which demand the 
closing of business houses on the Lord's day. Like 
many other laws on our statute books they are but 
feebly enforced in some places, but they are our 
laws, and so far as they are put in motion, work 
for our good, and are the legitimate expression 
of a Protestant, God-fearing nation. Should these 
laws be abrogated because a group of tax-paying 
citizens choose to keep Saturday for their day of 
worship instead of the Sabbath? If we were to 
cater to the various beliefs of our tax-paying citi- 
zens, heterogeneous mass that the latter are, for 
should have no national Sabbath : like France we 



Our Children in Peril. 83 

should drift into a most debasing secularism, for 
I doubt not we hold between the boundaries of 
our continent religious sects who keep Monday, 
those who keep Tuesday, others who keep Wednes- 
day, and so on throughout the entire week. It 
would be as impossible for the United States to 
cater to all this, as it would be impolitic for her 
to attempt to do so. The result of any such at- 
tempt would inevitably be the abolition of any 
national religious policy, which as many states- 
men (themselves irreligious) would confess, would 
be most disastrous. 

Some of the Eomanists deny that they were 
the ones who drove the Bible from our public 
schools. However that may be, I simply wish 
to draw public attention to this ; if the Eomanists 
were the ones to object to the soul-inspiring teach- 
ings of the Bible in the houses where our youth 
are trained, they are as clearly the enemies of 
their countr/s good as are the Mormons, and 
should be given no more heed in the direction of 
our schools than are the latter. 

This much I know: Eomanists as well as Protes- 
tants, are alarmed at the growth of immorality 
in our midst, for lately one of our dailies published 
a sermon in which a Eomanist priest advocated 
putting the Bible back into the schools. 

Let us not fall into that stupid error of con- 
founding liberty and license. Again and again, 
in despondent moments, it has seemed to me that 
as a nation we were doomed, and the sword that 
would deal the stroke was labeled, "Equal liberty 
for all !" That one idea, great in its real self, is 



84 The Tocsin: 

destructive in the distorted shape that ignorance 
gives it. 

"What then," you ask, "what can we do, and 
still be just to all ? I am but a woman, unlearned 
in statecraft; perhaps that is why the path seems 
so clear to me. What can the United States do? 
Why, exactly what she has already done in other 
directions. She looked about her and read the 
pages of history; read the signs of the times; 
saw that free love led to death — death of the 
home ; a heartrending orphanage of children ; de- 
struction of the moral nature, and she enacted 
laws to uphold the sanctity of the marriage tie. 
She looked about her and saw that miscegenation 
was revolting, and followed by dire results, and 
she enacted laws against it. She saw that Mor- 
monism was opposed to light and knowledge, to 
the moral development of the individual, and the 
uplifting of a people, and she enacted laws against 
it. What should she do about Eomanism? Sit her 
down by the light of the clear lamp of common 
sense and practical knowledge, and read of Spain, 
Italy, Ireland, South America, Cuba, the Philip- 
pines. Let her turn the pages carefully and read 
details ; let her contrast Protestant Ulster County, 
Ireland, with Eomanist Ireland ; contrast the few 
Catholic cantons in Switzerland with Protestant 
Switzerland. By the time she is ready to close this 
history she will not, I think, be over anxious to 
adopt in her schools any of the methods of a re- 
ligious body which has for so many long years, 
made such a dismal failure of its conduct of its vil- 
lages, towns, cities and countries. She will, me- 
thinks, read the history of Protestantism — ^the 



Our Children in Peril. 85 

record of Switzerland, Germany, England, and see 
how, notwithstanding many blunders; in spite of 
many departures from the right path, the general 
trend has been toward the light; toward the de- 
velopment of the individual, as well as the develop- 
ment of the national strength. She will see that 
the Eomanist religion must, of necessity, warp and 
enervate; see that the shifting of individual re- 
sponsibility to God, must relax moral tissue; that 
the cultivation of the superstitious elements must 
retard thought and weaken brain force, and tliat 
the pandering to the material in the pageantry em- 
ployed by the Eomanist church in its services and 
celebrations, must inevitably, to a greater or less 
extent, substitute form for spirit. In short she 
must see that the face of the Eomanist church is 
turned toward ignorance and darkness, while the 
face of Protestantism — Martin Luther's great pro- 
test against the corruption and blackness of 
the Eoman church, is set toward the Light. She 
must see that when that wonderful priest of the 
fifteenth century, turned from the church whose 
shame cried to Heaven for reform, he set in motion 
waves of light — the most powerful impulse for- 
warded the world has ever known. She is forced 
to see that those nations who received this quick- 
ening impulse — ^who threw overboard their cargo 
of saints, bones, relics, sensual priests — making a 
fat living by the sale of indulgences — those na- 
tions who shook off the bondage of cruelty, super- 
stition, and ignorance, have rapidly developed into 
the greatest of the earth, while those who clung 
to all this, have as rapidly gone down hill, until 



86 The Tocsin: 

to-day they have all but ceased to figure on the list 
of peoples of note. 

What then? Do we need to waver and hesi- 
tate ? No ! thank God ! We stand confessed — 
a Protestant nation ; consequently a great nation ! 
If only we are true to our high vocation and 
calling — if only we form a consistent policy and 
adhere to it! "But," you still demur, "must our 
Eomanist citizens pay for what they don't re- 
ceive?" By no means. We certainly would not 
compel them to attend our avowedly Protestant 
Public Schools; that would be an act of tyranny. 
When, in the very beginning of our history, we 
opened our doors to all religious sects, we did not 
bind ourselves to build our schools to their liking, 
but we did, in a manner, bind ourselves not to 
force them to attend, if they preferred schools 
of their own. Their school tax money need not 
distress us, however, it will be but a small pay- 
ment for value received, since, if the Bible is put 
into our Public Schools and our youth are care- 
fully trained in accordance with its sublime doc- 
trines, our Eomanist citizen will be benefited on 
every side ; sensuality will be held with a so much 
tighter rein ; intelligence, faithfulness and honesty 
will be so much more prevalent, that the property 
of a Eomanist, as well as that of a Protestant, will 
be far safer than it is where their church is su- 
preme ; and when in business life, these Eomanists 
have occasion to employ service, they will find it 
so much more reliable and otherwise valuable, 
than it is in Catholic countries, that even if they 
never send a child to our schools and still pay 
these taxes continually, they will, in the long run. 



Our Children In Peril. 87 

find themselves pecuniarily in debt to our system 
of education, and heavily, too ! 

As every sensible person must realize, this is not 
aimed at individuals; all of us who have seen 
much of the world must have known priests whose 
gentle, worthy lives commanded both respect and 
love. Personally I know and cherish several Cath- 
olic friends. All civilized Europe, as well as 
Am'erica, has lately joined in expressions of re- 
spect for the late Pope, but none of this blinds 
us to the fact that the religious system which 
these individuals uphold, is false and brings forth 
a lamentable harvest. The world, thanks to our 
Saviour, leans more and more toward tolerance 
and charity, but, as in the case of liberty and 
license, we must have a care to distinguish betwixt 
terms. There must be no laxity, however much 
of charity we cultivate. We must discriminate, 
however carefully we forbear to judge, and, 
while we love the individual, we must never 
condone the sin, or the error, which holds him 
down. 

I have Just been reading a booklet entitled 
"Problems of the Twentieth Century," by Bishop 
Fowler ; in this I find the following passage : "We 
have in our midst a strong church, with little to 
commend her, in her false and foolish dogmas, in 
constant antagonism to the educated mind of the 
age and in mortal combat with our free institu- 
tions; the old and sworn enemy of liberty and 
handicapped with the worst, most cruel and most 
bloody history known among men — a church that 
has blighted every people she has touched, robbed 
and ruined every country she has mastered, 



88 The Tocsin: 

dwarfed and deformed every race she has taught ; 
yet, in spite of her bigotry and bloody history, and 
her boast that she never changes ; by the power 
there is in her apparent works of charity, her care 
for children and for the sick, she is tolerated in 
this free land and aspires to dominion over the 
Eepublic." 

The last clause possesses no terrors for me, for 
I can not conceive of a country like ours slipping 
her neck into such a noose and thus voluntarily 
consenting to the strangling of all her free in- 
stitutions and her high aims. Let us take heed, 
however, that we open not the door to the enemy 
so much as one little crack, or, I should say, hav- 
ing foolishly done so already (in taking the Bible 
out of our schools) let us make haste to repair 
our error ere it be too late. 

I think that most people, like myself, in talking 
of our schools, think of a class of children similar 
to our own. We do not always bear in mind the 
kind of stuff that Public School scholars are made 
of. We should remember that we have to consider 
problems forced upon us by the introduction of a 
large and ignorant foreign element. A while ago 
I read a report made by a Commissioner of Immi- 
gration, in which he uttered a solemn warning. 
He spoke of the hordes of uneducated, low foreign- 
ers pouring into this country — all coming here 
with more or less distorted ideas of what they 
were to find and receive. He said that he did not 
wish to be an alarmist, but he could not help 
wondering what we were to do with these people 
through our cold winters, with work scarce and 
needs plenty. Now, then, it occurs to me that we 



Our Children in Peril. 89 

do not often enough have in mind the fact that 
the children of this untutored immigrant horde 
make up a large proportion of our Public School 
scholars, and unless they are so trained in these 
Public Schools as to make them God fearing, law- 
abiding citizens, they presently become an even 
graver menace to our Republic than were their 
parents, for without this religious tutelage of 
which I speak, the little learning they acquire at 
school becomes indeed "a dangerous thing," mak- 
ing them restless and rebellious. Again and again 
I wish to emphasize the fact that our future as a 
nation depends upon the children in this country. 
Should we not then regard our schools as the most 
important of all our institutions? "We do/' you 
cry; "we have always regarded them so." And 
yet, in spite of that, have very largely given them 
over to the management of i^orant, scheming, 
corrupt politicians ! Wisdom unparalleled, this ! 
We realize that the Eepublic rests on the training 
of these children, and yet we take the very back- 
bone from out that training! Expect it to stand 
after that? What consummate folly! As I said 
before, I am not a statesman; neither am I an 
idiot, but I should deserve to rank as one had I 
been guilty of such a piece of gross stupidity. 

For some years now we have been trying to run 
training schools for the young without religion. 
We are already realizing some of the results of this 
course. Our every paper is soiled with accounts 
of self-murder, and also murder of others than 
self; accounts of vile assaults upon virtue; of 
defalcation, highway robbery, burglary and other 
crimes. We say we cannot afford more teachers 



90 The Tocsin: 

and better teachers, but we manage to afford 
penitentiaries and insane and imbecile asylums, 
and year by year we are feeding our children to 
their awful maw. 

Some may object just here, to my lack of mod- 
eration. Garrison once said that he would not 
trouble himself to be moderate when dealing with 
slavery, neither will I trouble myself to be mod- 
erate when dealing with the growing immorality 
of our children. The subject does not admit of 
moderation. 

Eemember the pagan worship of Greece and her 
consequent enervation and ruin; the pagan wor- 
ship of Eome and her down-hill course, till she 
was fairly steeped in licentiousness. On our li- 
brary shelves stands the account of her "Decline 
and Fall." Let us read it carefully — read be- 
tween the lines, and then ponder. God grant we 
may awake to realize that just so surely as we 
attempt to carry on our schools without the "Book 
of Books," another Gibbon will, some day, arise 
to write "The Decline and Fall of the United 
States.'^ We are told on the highest authority — 
and the testimony of centuries corroborates 
this statement — that there is "none other name 
under heaven whereby we may be saved but the 
name of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

The day cries for reform. Let us, with God's 
help, set it in motion at once lest we be too late. 
Of old the monster that devoured children was 
the very embodiment of iniquity, and the very 
symbol of all that was horrible. He is no less so 
to-day; we have seen him in our midst; have 
witnessed his awful work. What can we do? In 



Our Children in Peril. 91 

the name of God, in the name of all we hold most 
dear ; in the name of Love — that which makes this 
world worth living, and makes the next world 
Heaven — fight him to the very death. There is 
one weapon, only one, that will neither break nor 
bend in the contest, and that one is the "sword of 
the Spirit, which is the Word of God." 

Up to this point I have been laying the em- 
phasis of my warning and entreaty upon our Pub- 
lic Schools. I have a still more earnest word to 
utter. Would I might insert an advertisement in 
every paper, large and small, all over the world. 
I should give it the most prominent place, the 
largest type, the most attractive style — "Wanted: 
Fathers and Mothers ! Christian parents ! gifted 
for their work, which is the loftiest God has in- 
trusted to any being. Voluntary parents, loving 
and longing for children. Men and women re- 
garding parenthood as supreme, passion as inci- 
dental ; believing that in the matter of parenthood 
the propagation of the species is not the main 
thing, but must be regarded as a private and 
public calamity unless the species be good; realiz- 
ing that intelligent, conscientious parenthood 
looks to conditions, and provides for the entrance 
of an immortal soul upon this great stage — the 
world. Fathers prepared to set an example to 
their sons. Mothers who regard their children as 
did Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi. Mothers 
who hold their children a sacred trust ; train them 
for the time when He shall come to make up His 
jewels. 

Instead of this, what have we now? Mothers 
who give their children over to the care of un- 



92 The Tocsin: 

principled nurses, A while ago an acquaintance 
of mine came home late in the evening and found 
her baby boy asleep by the side of a drunken 
nurse; another acquaintance discovered, one day, 
that the nurse who had for some weeks taken 
charge of her three children — the oldest a little 
girl about nine — was a prostitute. I am not ob- 
jecting to nurses; often they are a necessity. I 
do object, however, to their taking the entire care 
of the children; and I also object to their being 
the cheapest servants in the family. Get a cheap 
cook (if you must have a cheap servant) but get 
an expensive nurse. She will be the least ex- 
pensive in the end. I certainly don't mean a fash- 
ionable nurse with a fictitious price, but a Chris- 
tian gentlewoman who will, as nearly as possible, 
take your place with your children at times when 
it is impossible for you to care for them. A 
physician once told me that I would be surprised 
if I knew how many children were ruined by 
servants. He said that often careless parents of a 
coarse grain of mind let quite sizable boys sleep 
with some maid when the limitations of house- 
room seemed to demand crowding. In addition 
to all this, many thoughtless parents allow chil- 
dren to be bantered on the subject of falling in 
love, and so on, thereby fostering a most un- 
favorable precocity and breaking down that fine 
reserve which is a wall of defense. 

No doubt the sins of parents are visited upon 
children; heredity is an awful fact. Can the 
pure come from the impure? Occasionally in 
Nature we see the lily rise in its purity and white- 
ness from out the mire, but^ as a rule, like pro- 



Our Children in Peril. 93 

duces like, and great numbers of children are 
tainted ere ever they come into the world. It has 
been said by some one that the beasts of the field 
set man a commendable example, inasmuch as 
they do not molest approaching maternity. Too 
long man's conscience has been soothed by the 
theory that it is hardly possible and hardly wise 
to bring the physical under absolute control of 
the spiritual. In this enlightened day he and his 
partner should understand that enforced mater- 
nity never has been and never will be productive 
of purity in the oif spring ; that self-indulgence be- 
gets self-indulgence. Surely God did not make 
man in His image for this ! Let those whose con- 
science is "not dead, but sleeping," rouse to this 
truth and consider the responsibility they assume 
when they refuse to act upon it in married life. 

Awhile ago our President uttered some plain, 
manly words on the selfishness of the attempt to 
elude lawful and intended responsibilities by not 
having children. All over the coimtry there were 
cries of indignation, but in many hearts his words 
found congenial soil for growth. 

Among the lower classes, where each slice of 
bread is paid for in hard labor, we might look to 
see few children, but we find them swarm instead. 
How they are reared is another story, and yet 
not another quite, when we consider, for there is 
much of the same neglect in high and low circles. 
In the latter, necessity too often compels the hud- 
dling together of the different members of the 
family at night. This is frequently the case, even 
outside the slums, in the small cottage. A conse- 
quent carelessness is engendered ; children see and 



94 The Tocsin: 

hear too muchj and some of life's most sacred re- 
lations become to them mere objects of curiosity 
and imitation. I first had my attention called to 
this evil one day when I was speaking of a certain 
little child to an acquaintance of mine. "She 
knows too much," said the woman, "she knows 
more, I venture to say, than you or I. There is 
nothing in connection with the coming of life that 
could be told her." 

It seemed as if the child's very aspect changed 
as I listened to these words; her pretty baby can- 
dor (she was but four years old) shrank, and in 
place of the little innocent I had fancied her, I 
saw before me a weird object — nor child, nor 
woman; nor young, nor old — something uncanny, 
uncleanly. I love children with the love that 
yearns — that longs to take to one's heart. Before 
ever I had heard or known anything of this awful 
evil I could scarce pass one in the street without 
stopping for word or caress. Now, as I look at 
them it is often with a heartache. Poor babies ! 
poor babies ! Who is to blame ? It were better 
that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck ! 

Often as I go about and see groups of un- 
guarded children here and there, I ask: "Where 
are their mothers ?" Sometimes these mothers are 
off at work, earning the supper for their little 
ones. God pity the society where women are de- 
nied the rights and privileges of motherhood ! It 
must answer to Him. Sometimes the mothers are 
indoors, sweeping and dusting and polishing an 
o'er clean house that children would throw into 
confusion. God pity the women who show greater 
concern for wood and stone than for flesh and 



Our Children in Peril. 95 

blood and soul ! They must answer to Him. 
Often, often the mothers are trifling away their 
time with social acquaintances; perhaps sitting in 
their drawing-rooms, where candlelight is substi- 
tuted for sunlight, chatting over a cup of tea 
about the latest novel, the popular play or opera, 
or tearing an absent acquaintance to shreds with 
those who will presently tear them to bits at some 
other darkened house. God pity them ! Their 
day of reckoning v/ill come. 

I am hesitating, for my pen is powerless to ex- 
press my feeling. Could I write what is in my 
heart every mother would clasp her children in 
her arms; would thank God for them, and feel 
that her sweetest, most sacred duty was their 
training. What is one thinking of when he turns 
from pearls and diamonds and takes up with clay ? 
What can one be made of to prefer filth and rags 
to pure, beautiful raiment? "No one is such a 
fool !" you say ; but mothers — oh, ye mothers 
throughout our land, ye are turning away from 
happiness beyond expression, and taking up with 
emptiness — soul-sickening nothing ! 

Eecently Roy Eolfe Gilson gave a pearl to the 
world. He called it "In the Morning Glow." I 
read it with tears ; it is a book to stir the deepest, 
tenderest fountains of one's being. It tells of the 
dear old-fashioned mothers and grandmothers; 
pretty, loving, domestic mothers and grand- 
mothers ; pretty, for husband and children, sitting 
in the home — the house, or the garden, with their 
sewing, and the children playing about them. 
Think what it means to a child's character to have 
the mother almost always at hand; to be able to 



96 The Tocsin: 

nm to that never-failing fount of sympathy — 
"Mother, I have hurt my head !" That inexhaust- 
ible cyclopaedia of knowledge — "Mother, what 
makes the stars shine ?"' That living law and gos- 
pel — "Mother, ought I to let Willie have my new 
cart?" Mayhap this sounds trivial to 5'Ou; per- 
haps you think it better to turn these expanding 
minds, these immature moral natures into the 
street, to be smeared with the slime of some vile 
misinterpretation of life's great mysteries, while 
"Mother" is off at some Woman's Club cultivating 
her mind. What! Are we never to leave home? 
Unless your means admit of your securing in your 
family a Christian, motherly woman who can, in 
a manner, take your place while 3^ou run out for 
a few hours, I urge upon you to stay at your post 
or take your children with you save when the 
sternest necessity calls you away. What a life ! 
groans some gay girl who is e'rV.eT unfit for its 
glory or else merely ignorant, for often gay, care- 
less girls make the best of mothers, once their eyes 
are opened to the beauty and richness of the true 
mother's life. Stay at home? What better, 
dearer, happier place on earth ? Thank God every 
moment of your life that you have one, and if He 
has given into your keeping little children, hold 
your breath and just whisper your thanks, awe- 
stricken at His goodness; at the wonder of it all 
and the possibilities it opens before you. 

There is nothing on earth so fascinating as the 
development of a child's character; there is noth- 
ing so tenderly precious as its clinging, trusting 
love. With those baby arms around your neck, 
with those little velvet hands stroking your face. 



Our Children in Peril. 97 

with the dear little voices whispering into your 
ear, "I love you, Mama," what more do you 
want on earth — or even in Heaven? It is Heaven 
brought to earth. 

We should do well to take a few lessons of the 
Germans. I think they go about as families much 
more than we do. It is a delightful sight to see 
old and young skating together there, and off a- 
holidaying together in various directions. Why 
should not we women go about more with husband 
and children? A little supper out-of-doors in the 
country of a Summer evening; a coast down hill 
together in Winter, or a skim over the shining ice, 
hand in hand; a concert, when we can look into 
each other's faces and read the answering delight 
— all this would refresh us and scatter flowers 
along life's pathway. 

Walk with your children, talk with them, study 
with them ; live simply, dress simply, house simply, 
so that you will have more time for these higher 
duties. Above all, keep them off the street as 
much as posible. If I were to speak my real mind 
I should say, keep them away from school until 
our schools are changed; at present they are too 
often schools of vice. 

"Would you keep children in a bandbox?" By 
no means. Let them have companions as they 
grow older, but do you be their chief companion, 
and do you be the guiding star of the other com- 
panions as well as of your own children. Talk 
with them plainly and beautifully of God's won- 
ders in connection with life; tell them to keep 
this saered secret just for you; to come to you at 
any time, you will answer any question, but never 



98 The Tocsin: 

allow any one else to speak of it to them. As they 
grow older and the inevitable changes take place, 
do as a woman with a drinking husband said she 
did: "Pray God and hold on." You'll be tired, 
vexed, M^orried, disapointed, unless you keep hold 
of Him, no doubt, for this has been dubbed the 
"hateful age." Both boys and girls are more ex- 
citable and nervous, contrary, rebellious at that 
time. The animal is developing in advance of the 
spiritual, or even the mental, but hold on. Make 
home as attractive as possible ; yourself stil morle 
so ; love harder than ever, and live on your knees, 
as it were. You have God's promise ; if you trust 
this, and lean on it, the children will come out as 
gold from the furnace. The May, 1891, "At- 
lantic" contains a most beautiful article on this 
age of puberty. Every parent and teacher should 
read it. 

If your children go to school, do you go, too, 
frequently, as a visitor. Watch the time of their 
home-coming ; let there be no loitering to and fro ; 
no early going, long before school. 

A s}anpathetic co-operation of school boards, 
trustees, teachers and parents would go far toward 
elucidating many of the problems that confront us 
now. The mothers' meetings, held in some of our 
schoolhouses, are steps in this good direction, espe- 
cially as they enhance the importance of the 
parents in the eyes of the children, and connect 
them directly with the school. 

For practical life-training work, the home is the 
place par excellence, especially if it is so fortunate 
as to be situated in the country, or in a town or 
small city, where it is possible to spread out a bit 



Our Children in Peril. 99 

and have a garden. Give your children home in- 
terests, make them responsible for certain depart- 
ments in the house and out-of-doors, and give 
them all the credit for any successful running of 
these. The home love which this engenders, as 
well as the capability, is of greatest value. In ad- 
dition to this, it serves as healthful occupation, 
and keeps children from much harmful idleness. 
Possibly I exaggerate the number of children 
who are polluted as I have described. God grant 
I do ! In the first shock of the revelation of im- 
morality among mere infants, as well as youth, 
one can hardly see clearly enough to count with 
accuracy. Grief and horror are pessimistic; even 
a naturally buoyant nature has to struggle against 
this tendency in contemplating an evil of such 
magnitude. But in my most depressed moments, 
when it has seemed to me that almost all our sweet 
lambs had gone astray, I have read the history of 
Elijah and found comfort. I can, to-day, I think, 
enter with swift sympathy into his heavy heart 
when he withdrew from the world and sat one 
side, abandoned, for the time, to leaden despon- 
dency. He had tried to stem the tide; had 
sounded his warning; had rushed hither and 
thither over the field of the battle of Life, trying 
to instill fainting and treacherous soldiers with 
loyalty to the Great Captain; had stood in front 
of the deserting hosts in a vain efEort to arrest 
their shameful flight. Then, weary and hurt in 
body, and yet more v/eary and hurt in soul, he had 
crept off into the wilderness like a wounded deer, 
and from out that hiding place, had gazed with 
mental vision upon the ruin of that which he 



LofC: 



lOO The Tocsin: 

loved best, and the victory of that which was most 
infamous. How he cried to God that all was lost 
— that he — only he, sitting there, solitary and 
alone; broken in spirit, crushed in heart, was left 
to serve his Maker ! 

And then came the answer, — calm, serene; a 
sweet, clear, steadfast note : "Yet have I left seven 
thousand in Israel — all the knees which have not 
bowed unto Baal." 

And so I take heart once more. God has not let 
Satan leave his sickening mark on all our chil- 
dren. There is a large remnant yet ; a remnant of 
babies as sweet, as pure as the angels; of little 
ones in whose large, wondering eyes we catch 
glimpses of the "land o' the leal." 

God grant that we may so learn to deal with 
our children that this remnant may wax greater 
with each succeeding year until it shall embrace, 
not only all of babyhood, but all of childhood and 
youth as well. When that day comes we shall 
indeed be a great nation among the nations of the 
world — a nation of briTe men and of women 
beautiful in the fullest, richest sense of the word. 

Once we go to the right source for guidance 
and strength, there need be no despondency. Ee- 
member how our Saviour one day said: "Of such 
is the kingdom of Heaven," and how another time 
He "took a little child and set him in the midst 
of them." I seem to see that little one — loving, 
trustful, pure in heart; making efforts in his baby 
way, to do as he was bid; slipping his little hand 
into the Saviour's so confidingly ; ready to walk 
whither the dear Christ led. What wonder he 
bade his hearer ^Tjecome like unto one of these." 



Our Children in Peril. loi 

"Oh, you are always coming back to this !" some 
one exclaimed the other day. 

So I am; I know no other way. It is the Gos- 
pel;, first, second and last — not just for Sunday, 
but for every day of the week; not for church 
alone, but for home and school as well. I know 
of no other purification for our defiled springs. 
Nor am I alone in looking to religion for aid at 
this juncture of our history. The other day an 
editorial appeared in a daily newspaper, calling 
for another John Wesley. The article cited many 
of the proofs of degeneracy; the flagrant mu- 
nicipal corruption; the unfaithfulness in service, 
public and private; the desecration of the Sab- 
bath; the violation of conjugal faith and purity. 
These, and many other alarming evidences pointed 
to a rapid decadence, from which we need to be 
rescued, and the article called for another re- 
ligious leader — another John Wesley — ^to rouse 
men's dull consciences and to quicken religious 
impulses. A wave of reform, it said, would be a 
Godsend indeed. 

Some nineteen years back — it may be more (I 
am not positive) — Professor Koch, of Berlin, dis- 
covered that consumption was caused by a bacillus, 
and that it wag contagious. Since then, many and 
elaborate have been the researches among physi- 
cians all over the world for some specific to com- 
bat this germ. The utmost learning has been 
brought into requisition, and experiments without 
number have been performed in laboratories and 
in hospitals. And now, after years spent in 
search for some scientific remedy, physicians have 
just opened their eyes to Nature's simple ways. 



I02 The Tocsin: 

and are performing wonders in the cure of con- 
sumption by the use of some things which a few 
of us have been using all the time. Sanitariums 
are now established in different parts of the world 
where the window spaces in the walls have no glass, 
and close to these the patient sleeps, well bundled 
up, with the snow drifting over him, mayhap. 
Just plenty of clean, fresh air to breathe night 
and day, and plenty of clean, cold water to bathe 
in. 

So it will be with the sickness of the soul. Phi- 
losopher, Moralist and Sociologist, have been 
searching for some specific to combat the disease. 
But after all the stiff-necked assertion of mankind 
that he can cure himself, by efforts of will; 
after experiments on the part of France, Germany, 
England, the United States, and other countries 
in checking immoralit}^, we shall come (God has- 
ten the day!) to some simple remedies we could 
have used long ago — the pure air of the Mount of 
Olives, and the revivifying Water of Life. 



THE END. 



vt\j lij 1308 



